Charlie is 1,000% right!

[bullsmeanbusiness]

2 minutes ago, Gismo said:

12:00 games have lower attendance. Students aren't even awake yet after Friday night partying.

Are we really still dissing the students when they have packed the student section for both games???

[Bulls On Parade]

1 minute ago, Gismo said:

I think those were announced numbers back then. 

Im looking at wiki they only use announced.

If we beat Fsu at ray jay a few years ago I imagine it changes alot.

 

[Dave_Glaser]

We have a really fun product for any casual fan and have had one for going on four years. It's just too bad so many people are missing it in this pro-centric market.

[Grateful Dad]

It's not the students.  You could have a wall to wall student section and that would only be ~15k, IIRC. 
The rest of the stadium would look very red. 

The culture is changing.  Older people?  Mostly Yankees who eschew any college sports and will not sit in 100 degrees for anything.  Younger people?  Even at the game (outside of the student section)  head down, texting, Facebooking, selfies, etc.  Attention span is shot.

We need to consistently offer big name wins.  Older fans (and sports writers) might remember declaring USF the new Cinderella, only to have USF lose to a lesser opponent and making them look like fools.  Some are gunshy to climb on the wagon at this point.  We have to prove ourselves all over again.  And, dare I say - a lot of fans don't even know what conference we are in, so a conference championship will not draw them in.  A win that has the sportsworld buzzing will get their attention.  But this is a tough market.  Just ask the Rays.

[puc86]

1 minute ago, Grateful Dad said:

 And, dare I say - a lot of fans don't even know what conference we are in, so a conference championship will not draw them in.  A win that has the sportsworld buzzing will get their attention.

I say this all the time, 10’s of people will care if we win an AAC conference championship and all of them are on this board and all of them go to every game. No one cares about the AAC and the only way to win it and any fans in the process is to win a ticket out of it and into the big leagues. I hope we win the conference championship this year just so we can finally stop hearing about how much it matters because if you ask 100 random people to name an AAC champion from any year people will ask you what the AAC is. I don’t think I am even sure who all is in our conference. In short winning AAC games has proven to excite exactly no one and we need to play anyone not in the AAC and win those games if we want to draw any interest and support.

[Ned A Starr RIP]

1 hour ago, OcalaBull2 said:

While "no one ever" is not true, he's not wrong at all about what he's saying.  There's not a single reason that Florida and FSU make the front page of sports after two embarrassing performances yet we don't.  I also checked the sports page of TBT online yesterday and there wasn't a single thing about USF on the main page.  That's inexcusable.  

Audience Size.

[Dave_Glaser]

1 minute ago, Grateful Dad said:

It's not the students.  You could have a wall to wall student section and that would only be ~15k, IIRC. 
The rest of the stadium would look very red. 

The culture is changing.  Older people?  Mostly Yankees who eschew any college sports and will not sit in 100 degrees for anything.  Younger people?  Even at the game (outside of the student section)  head down, texting, Facebooking, selfies, etc.  Attention span is shot.

We need to consistently offer big name wins.  Older fans (and sports writers) might remember declaring USF the new Cinderella, only to have USF lose to a lesser opponent and making them look like fools.  Some are gunshy to climb on the wagon at this point.  We have to prove ourselves all over again.  And, dare I say - a lot of fans don't even know what conference we are in, so a conference championship will not draw them in.  A win that has the sportsworld buzzing will get their attention.  But this is a tough market.  Just ask the Rays.

No doubt, this is a tough market. Another thing that bugs is the media narrative that somehow every game against the so-called P5 is a chance to make a statement. Does USF have to win EVERY ONE of these matchups to make its statement? If they're paying attention, is there anyone out there at this point that doesn't believe USF is capable of competing in a P5 conference? How many P5 wins does it take? Do we need to go down the list again?

[puc86]

27 minutes ago, Bulls On Parade said:

Looked myself it was around 40k or so...Im afraid it will take a big win to get people back on band wagon and it starts next year beating Wisconsin at home.

The entire stadium holds like 65k. You felt it looked like the entire lower bowl was mostly filled since there was clearly no people in the upper bowl? It felt pretty glass half full to me.

[Grateful Dad]

Sure wish we played UF and FSU this year.  That would have certainly helped as we would spank both of them.  At this point, we have to start with a UCiF game victory and work up from there.

[Dave_Glaser]

Just now, NAS Gone to Paradise said:

Audience Size.

You're right, but how can they argue that as a news source? If they want to make that argument, then the Rays should be relegated permanently to the inside pages and never see the front page. Only Yankees and Red Sox stories should make the front page in this market.