Attendance is an embarrassment

[CousinRicky]

1 hour ago, NAS Gone to Paradise said:

You’re a bit late in the game.

UT was wise and dropped football in 74.

 

So you are saying that Tampa was a college football town in the 70s?

[Apis Bull]

2 minutes ago, Bourbon Bull said:

So you are saying that Tampa was a college football town in the 70s?

Apparantly

[zarnozdabull]

20 hours ago, NAS Gone to Paradise said:

You should run, not walk to a Shrink!

The day I take life advice from someone with your kind of reputation, I'll consider it.

[bullcocky101]

I'll say this again, we are a ranked team with an fcs level fan base. This is why our ceiling is low as a program. If we had the building rocking Thursday night with a packed house generating excitement and Buzz for the team on national tv, we wouldn't be so dissed in the media. The media knows where the fans are and don't think that didn't factor into their coverage of a team and rankings a little bit. 12th man is important for so many things.

[bullsmeanbusiness]

 

[Rex Havoc]

I'm working really hard on getting more people to join me for the Homecoming game. I wish they'd post the time of the game earlier than they do. The time doesn't matter to me, but 1 of my friends can't make it if it's a 12pm start. TV should have to make their schedule further in advance. 

[charsibb]

44 minutes ago, Apis Bull said:

47 minutes ago, Bourbon Bull said:

So you are saying that Tampa was a college football town in the 70s?

Apparantly

Still is, with the same fan base, half for the Gators, half for the Noles...

[deters-]

1 hour ago, zerogbull said:

My 2 cents:

I was in the crowd that blamed Holtz and losing on our lost attendance.   We drew big crowds in the Big East, I thought they would return...  they obviously did not as evidenced by our first home games this season.  Winning, ranked, and competing for a CC and NYB obviously mean nothing to our missing 'fans'.  

So what else could it be?    I am starting to think we had too much success, too fast as a program...  which created a false appearance of support and legit fans.   I don't believe we, today,  actually have a real/large fanbase....  no matter how many students or alums live in the area.

We went from nothing to FCS, to FBS, to BCS, to beating big time ranked opponents in essentially a decade.   That incredible rise generated a LOT of excitement in the bay area...  and led to those big crowds at RJS.   We had better crowds in our initial years than we did last Thursday night!

But obviously that paper/bandwagon fanbase could not tolerate losing, and demotion to a non elite conference.   They are gone, and even winning, ranked, competing for a NY bowl are not going to bring them back.

It's a shame, but I don't think an OCS stadium helps at all...  in the near term.  It just moves the empty seats to campus.   We all know from the late 2000s that everyone knows how to get to RJS.   They just don't want to go attend now, no matter how much we win against 'smaller time' opponents.   Crying shame. 

At this point, our current support is not sustainable for us as an FBS program.  Tallybull made a brilliant point above, you have to build the OCS as a requirement...  you can't wait for better attendance at RJS to justify the need.    It's clear the fanbase is gone, we are starting at baseline.  We need to BUILD a new fanbase.   That will happen on campus, or not at all...  given our current conference.    We can't rely on big (Big East) opponents to bring in visiting fans anymore.

[Rex Havoc]

We should be spending more time and effort on finding solutions then complaining. I know I've complained, but that doesn't solve anything. Here are some ideas I had to improve attendance  

If everyone who has season tickets brought 1 or 2 extra people to each game it would really help. I'm sure we all know a couple USF grads who don't attend games. 

USF should allow season ticket holders to purchase extra tickets in certain sections for say $10. There could be representatives from USF Athletics there to talk about season ticket packages, giving tours of the stadium, etc. 

USF should have incentives for using all of your tickets for every game. Maybe USF could give away on field passes, suite for a game, free ticket package for an away game, etc. 

What other ideas do you have? If we come up with a list of ideas I'll email it to Harlan. 

Edited September 23, 2017 by Rex Havoc

[Apis Bull]

Watching the FSU-NC State game.   More than 1/3 of their visiting side is empty