Attendance. It's not just us...

[IthacaBarrel]

You're wasting a lot of effort on merely relabeling things. Winning is like 99% of the entertainment experience you keep referring to. It is a much greater % than you have suggested. Walking out of the dome after a loss hurts. It makes you question your sanity - when you make that walk down the hill - why you care, why you spend your money, why you waste your time? No amount of offense, no pony rides, no video boards, no nothing is going to impact that like winning the damn game. The walk back is an entirely different experience when the team wins.

The distinction you are so adamantly making comes across as oddly defensive.

Made that drive down 81 many a late afternoon after a Syracuse football games. All you have to do ask the kids, why is it they like Syracuse basketball so much more than Syracuse football? Is it the walks from the truck in subzero temps, the drives back home at 9:30 at night versus the tailgates, pounding sodas and good food and seeing their friends ( my buddies kids) they only see a few times a year? winning matters, it matters big time. They get it too, they love walking out of that dome with a win just as much as we do. Winning builds fans, loyalty and repeat customers. I grew up going to games with my old man starting in the early eighties.. I know winning when it comes to Syracuse football as most of us do here

 

[Rocco]

A lot of people don't even know what's going on with Syracuse Football half the time around CNY, and if they do, they assume we're still suck (super frustrating to listen to). In order to be at the forefront of the news, coffee talk, etc... we have to WIN. It's really as simple as that.

I do not ever seeing us sell-out game after game, but if there is enough excitement and increased attention towards this program, we will sell-out the big games (Fl St, Clem, Lou, Pitt maybe). We need to win one of those big games though to make that experience memorable for the fans who were there.

We laid a fat egg during the Clemson game, and our fans showed up big-time. It helped that Clemson had 3-4k there, but our fans have the potential. I remember hearing people walking out after that drubbing saying "same old, same old". If we can win one of those games, it will get more people talking, which will certainly help with ticket sales at future games.

It all starts with winning. People won't buy a product with little demand. Winning helps swing the supply/demand pendulum back to our favor.

 

[RMH44]

Why do we have to everything the hard way? There are very few Stanfords for a reason

I'm not sure where you're going with this. Stanford's metamorphosis into a top ten program is a relatively recent phenomena. In the not to distance past they sucked.

'80's record = 44-66-2
'90's record = 60-54-1
From 2000 to 2006 (Harbaugh arrived in 2007) their combined record was a Grob-like 30-51.
Combined (1980-2006) record pre-Harbaugh = 134-171-3

Harbaugh/Shaw (2007-present) = 63-28

Harbaugh completely transformed the culture of the program and David Shaw has kept pace. HCSS has mentioned his experiences at Stanford many times. It gives one hope that maybe another small private school can have similar success.

 

[Millhouse]

Made that drive down 81 many a late afternoon after a Syracuse football games. All you have to do ask the kids, why is it they like Syracuse basketball so much more than Syracuse football? Is it the walks from the truck in subzero temps, the drives back home at 9:30 at night versus the tailgates, pounding sodas and good food and seeing their friends ( my buddies kids) they only see a few times a year? winning matters, it matters big time. They get it too, they love walking out of that dome with a win just as much as we do. Winning builds fans, loyalty and repeat customers. I grew up going to games with my old man starting in the early eighties.. I know winning when it comes to Syracuse football as most of us do here

cannibalization.

less than 500,000 people in onondaga county. 143rd most populous county in the US.

how many games can people possibly go to in a year? people choose to go to basketball games. the team is awesome, it doesn't take forever and a day to get through a game, you're less scared of someone ending up dead or paralyzed, and you can always count on getting a ticket because the capacity is so great.

why in the world would we ever expect decent crowds against Wagner? that game is competing against ACC basketball games. if you have a limited budget of money and time and like both sports, entertainment value of SU basketball blows football out of the water

we can't expect the same people to go to all the games and the population isn't big enough to support two big time sports. the wolves of wall st with no common sense or math skills like to pretend that a) syracuse is big and b) podunk state school stadiums are filled with locals

i think they should make a big push for rochester football fans who don't like the ralph because you're not cannibalizing as much - those fans aren't the ones going to every basketball game. too hard to get to the weekday games in the winter after work.

 

[IthacaBarrel]

I'm not sure where you're going with this. Stanford's metamorphosis into a top ten program is a relatively recent phenomena. In the not to distance past they sucked.

'80's record = 44-66-2
'90's record = 60-54-1
From 2000 to 2006 (Harbaugh arrived in 2007) their combined record was a Grob-like 30-51.
Combined (1980-2006) record pre-Harbaugh = 134-171-3

Harbaugh/Shaw (2007-present) = 63-28

Harbaugh completely transformed the culture of the program and David Shaw has kept pace. HCSS has mentioned his experiences at Stanford many times. It gives one hope that maybe another small private school can have similar success.

The attendance at Stanford isn't very good either, better now for sure but still not great. They certainly don't have a loyal fanbase but the advantage they have is ton of alumni within a 30-40 mile radius of the campus still and many wealthy alumni in that radius as well. Close Alumni and $$$$$$$$, good combo

 

[IthacaBarrel]

cannibalization.

less than 500,000 people in onondaga county. 143rd most populous county in the US.

how many games can people possibly go to in a year? people choose to go to basketball games. the team is awesome, it doesn't take forever and a day to get through a game, you're less scared of someone ending up dead or paralyzed, and you can always count on getting a ticket because the capacity is so great.

why in the world would we ever expect decent crowds against Wagner? that game is competing against ACC basketball games. if you have a limited budget of money and time and like both sports, entertainment value of SU basketball blows football out of the water

we can't expect the same people to go to all the games and the population isn't big enough to support two big time sports. the wolves of wall st with no common sense or math skills like to pretend that a) syracuse is big and b) podunk state school stadiums are filled with locals

i think they should make a big push for rochester football fans who don't like the ralph because you're not cannibalizing as much - those fans aren't the ones going to every basketball game. too hard to get to the weekday games in the winter after work.

Winning will improve attendance. Plain and simple. Stats are for losers! I know how much you enjoy that statement

Some people who go to to 1-2 games will go to 3-4, some who don't go will go to 1-2. All that is there now are the diehards and corporate bozos. That's it. Never going to be great by any means, really never was GREAT

 

[Millhouse]

I'm not sure where you're going with this. Stanford's metamorphosis into a top ten program is a relatively recent phenomena. In the not to distance past they sucked.

'80's record = 44-66-2
'90's record = 60-54-1
From 2000 to 2006 (Harbaugh arrived in 2007) their combined record was a Grob-like 30-51.
Combined (1980-2006) record pre-Harbaugh = 134-171-3

Harbaugh/Shaw (2007-present) = 63-28

Harbaugh completely transformed the culture of the program and David Shaw has kept pace. HCSS has mentioned his experiences at Stanford many times. It gives one hope that maybe another small private school can have similar success.

stanford shows the value in going against the grain. they're playing a bunch of teams that have no idea how to replicate what stanford is doing on offense. i think the dome swamps that though. southern conference + dome + recruiting rivals stuck in crappy weather

 

[Millhouse]

Winning will improve attendance. Plain and simple. Stats are for losers! I know how much you enjoy that statement

they'll have to win a lot to take people away from basketball! i think part of it needs to be an entertaining offense. why beat our heads against the wall.

i don't know how anyone can go to every basketball game. I used to get burned out on bills season tickets in high school even though they were amazing and i had nothing else going on at all

 

[Chip]

less than 500,000 people in onondaga county. 143rd most populous county in the US.

The big state schools would probably have a different definition of the term "local" as it applies to a non-alum. They wouldn't just look at the county where the school is. People come from all over the state to go to a Georgia or Tennessee or Penn State game. Not just alumni.

The definition for local as it pertains to Syracuse should also include all the bordering counties. I don't know what that does to the population count, but they're basically all SU fans. Should be able to be enough to get us 45k for any ACC game or any decent out of conference game. But, as I said earlier, we need to be better. Winning 6-7 games looks awesome now because we lived thru the GRob years. In the 90s, 7 wins was a bad season.

We're never going to draw for a FCS. Hoops team suffers from that too. When they open against early cupcakes, they're typically down anywhere from 10 to 15k from a the high water mark.

 

[Chip]

This. No matter the type of offense, or whether you have likable players, or if the uniforms are sweet, or if even your prices may be okay, you have to get some early wins to energize the casual fans.

There is a bit of a caveat to that. In the mid 90s, the team had credit built with the fans. So in 1996 when we started 0-2, or 1997 when we started 1-3, we didn't see the dip. 1996's 3rd game was against a pretty full house for VT. But those fans knew McNabb was there, you felt it more of when, not if, things would get turned around.

After the slip into mediocrity at the end of P, the slip into the abyss for GRob, the climbing back out of that now, there's no credit built up. You start 0-2, you've turned a lot of people away.

 

[RMH44]

The attendance at Stanford isn't very good either, better now for sure but still not great. They certainly don't have a loyal fanbase but the advantage they have is ton of alumni within a 30-40 mile radius of the campus still and many wealthy alumni in that radius as well. Close Alumni and $$$$$$$$, good combo

Agreed about their attendance...I read that.

I think there are two major contributing factors to the decreasing national attendance numbers. 1) contrary to all the propaganda we're hit with, the national economy blows and people are being much more deliberative with their entertainment budgets. 2) as mentioned above, with HD TV and the ability to watch from home...why even leave your man cave.

 

[Millhouse]

The big state schools would probably have a different definition of the term "local" as it applies to a non-alum. They wouldn't just look at the county where the school is. People come from all over the state to go to a Georgia or Tennessee or Penn State game.

The definition for local as it pertains to Syracuse should also include all the bordering counties. I don't know what that does to the population count, but they're basically all SU fans. Should be able to be enough to get us 45k for any ACC game or any decent out of conference game. But, as I said earlier, we need to be better. Winning 6-7 games looks awesome now because we lived thru the GRob years. In the 90s, 7 wins was a bad season.

We're never going to draw for a FCS. Hoops team suffers from that too. When they open against early cupcakes, they're typically down anywhere from 10 to 15k from a the high water mark.

feeble attempt at justifying laziness. i assume that the counties around onondaga are ranked about the same as every other counties surrounding counties. all those counties that are bigger probably have proportionally bigger surrounding counties. rochester and albany are the growth markets, i think. easier said than done.

part of the reason i stuck to onondaga is that we don't have enough alumni and the ones we do have want the games moved to NYC. which cannibalizes the one road trip we might get from NYers who can pass up a night at the Met.

 

[Chip]

feeble attempt at justifying laziness. i assume that the counties around onondaga are ranked about the same as every other counties surrounding counties. all those counties that are bigger probably have proportionally bigger surrounding counties. rochester and albany are the growth markets, i think. easier said than done.

part of the reason i stuck to onondaga is that we don't have enough alumni and the ones we do have want the games moved to NYC. which cannibalizes the one road trip we might get from NYers who can pass up a night at the Met.

But our stadium is half the size of their stadiums.

When things were great, I wonder how much of our crowd was coming in from NYC. Even if it's one game per year, how does that change what happened in 2013? Crappy attendance for most games, great attendance for Clemson.

Can't really call the ND series a miss for the Carrier Dome. There wouldn't be ND on the schedule if we wanted the Carrier Dome. So who would it then be? Anyone so good that would make a NYC person go to that game in 2014 instead of FSU?

 

[Millhouse]

But our stadium is half the size of their stadiums.

When things were great, I wonder how much of our crowd was coming in from NYC. Even if it's one game per year, how does that change what happened in 2013? Crappy attendance for most games, great attendance for Clemson.

Can't really call the ND series a miss for the Carrier Dome. There wouldn't be ND on the schedule if we wanted the Carrier Dome. So who would it then be? Anyone so good that would make a NYC person go to that game in 2014 instead of FSU?

probably not. but maybe that NYC fan who goes to FSU displaces some local who'd go to the next best game. i don't know, now i'm getting into randomness.

i think the clemson games show that Syracuse fans pick their spots and want to be entertained and it's not a bright line between football and basketball. an exciting offense they haven't seen before is good enough to compete with basketball. maybe they need more dynamic pricing. can't have clemson every game. charge a lot for that, make wagner free, i don't know. it's not easy to get this right. and it's not like there are a lot of schools with a similar problem (most have rinky dink basketball capacity)

 

[Scooch]

People really overthink this stuff. Like, a lot.

I agree that our hoops amazingness has some negative impact on football attendance. If people have to choose how to spend their discretionary income they're much more likely to buy tickets to see the perennial top 10 hoops team that has had plausible national title aspirations for most of the past 25 years vs. a football program that hasn't been so much as ranked in over a decade.

But that being said, we're talking about needing to add about 5,000 people per game to get back to the levels we were at in the salad days of the 1990s. I know times have changed, but there's still plenty of population to maintain the 25K/game we get for hoops while returning to the 45K/game we used to get for football.

I think scoring 40 points a game would be helpful, but it's a small component. If we win a lot, especially EARLY in the season, then people will turn out. Look at attendance in the late 80s/90s and you see the same pattern: early games would draw relatively weakly (aside from the occasional big-time opponent), and then the last 2-3 games in late October/November would draw very well, even against unsexy teams like BC and Pitt. These days we start weak and end weaker because we're slogging into late October with 5+ losses. Some of you were incredulous that the Pitt game drew so poorly, but no one gives a about us playing to qualify for a bowl. If we were 8-2 instead of 5-5 then we'd have had another 10K there, easy.

 

[OrangePA]

Imagine SU could transform into mich st or Oregon. Which would draw better?

Then ask yourself how many non factories are important because of defense? Then ask same question about offense

First, I think you're splitting very narrow hairs.

Second, it's an easy distincition because Oregon is now a much more dominant football program than Michigan State and has been for the last four years.

Third, if SU were to become Oregon and were to win 11 to 12 games per year the Dome would sell out - and the same holds true if SU were to become Michigan State and were to generate the same record.

 

[OrangePA]

I don't understand why you struggle to accept that winning can't do it alone.

Because I know the the community and I know the truth.

I've been there and have seen what happens - whether it's hockey, baseball, basketball or football.

 

[Millhouse]

First, I think you're splitting very narrow hairs.

Second, it's an easy distincition because Oregon is now a much more dominant football program than Michigan State and has been for the last four years.

Third, if SU were to become Oregon and were to win 11 to 12 games per year the Dome would sell out - and the same holds true if SU were to become Michigan State and were to generate the same record.

who is splitting hairs? michigan state has been really good.

maybe i should've picked someone worse than oregon but the last 4 years Mich St went 11-3 11-2 and 13-1 with a 7-6 in there. had to give dantonio a little time to get up and running.

it's hard to find good examples of non super powers being really relevant with defense

easier to scheme for a good offense and hope we hit the jackpot on defense than vice versa. and i think it helps attendance. if it's just winning that draws the crowd, we're never going to compete with our own basketball team. it has to have the entertainment component as well (and i don't think the marginal fan that we're talking about thinks Mich St is as entertaining as some high scoring team not quite as good as oregon)

 

[Millhouse]

But that being said, we're talking about needing to add about 5,000 people per game to get back to the levels we were at in the salad days of the 1990s. I know times have changed, but there's still plenty of population to maintain the 25K/game we get for hoops while returning to the 45K/game we used to get for football.

That's the big question. I don't think that's true.

i think we might be overestimating the fraction of people who can or want to go to games.

 

[Scooch]

That's the big question. I don't think that's true.

The Syracuse MSA (the three counties immediately surrounding the city) has a population of 660K, which is up slightly (10K) from 10 years ago. The Syracuse CSA which is a slightly larger defined area (I think it includes one more contiguous county) is 730K, and that's basically flat to the last census. Neither of those areas include any population associated with Binghamton, Utica, or Rochester. So I think it's safe to say that there are about 1 million people within an hour's drive of the Dome?

That hasn't changed much in 20 years (which isn't good obviously, it should be growing) but I don't think that's the problem in getting another 5K to the Dome on Saturdays, I really don't.

*edit* Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_census_statistical_areas

Utica/Rome would add another 300K, and Binghamton another 250K. That takes you to 1.2 million without any Rochester area population whatsoever.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

if it's just winning that draws the crowd, we're never going to compete with our own basketball team. it has to have the entertainment component as well (and i don't think the marginal fan that we're talking about thinks Mich St is as entertaining as some high scoring team not quite as good as oregon)

The other thing that I dislike about putting all the chips in the "winning" basket is that you leave yourself banking on a lot of things you can't really control - how good the team is, how the schedule lines up, etc.

Of course you need winning to be a part of the experience, but there are other things you can proactively do to make the experience better that you actually can control. I mean, I don't know if people actually read the article, but winning programs are having attendance issues. The answer isn't just win more, it's about finding out if your product fits your audience, and if it doesn't, tweak the product until it brings in the crowds. You do that by knowing your audience and understanding why they're staying away. There are reasons, among them winning, why the experience hasn't been enough to draw people.

 

[Millhouse]

The Syracuse MSA (the three counties immediately surrounding the city) has a population of 660K, which is up slightly (10K) from 10 years ago. The Syracuse CSA which is a slightly larger defined area (I think it includes one more contiguous county) is 730K, and that's basically flat to the last census. Neither of those areas include any population associated with Binghamton, Utica, or Rochester. So I think it's safe to say that there are about 1 million people within an hour's drive of the Dome?

That hasn't changed much in 20 years (which isn't good obviously, it should be growing) but I don't think that's the problem in getting another 5K to the Dome on Saturdays, I really don't.

that's why i tried to think of it in terms of ranking. because when i look at population, I end up falling into the trap of thinking that everyone can support a team. big number population, small number seats - easy! i'm sure you have much better data than i do, i quickly scrambled to find onondaga's rank and ran with that

with our basketball capacity being double a normal one, it's really like we're asking those million people to support a football team, a basketball team and a hockey team.

wikipedia says syracuse is the 64th CSA. it's just a wild guess but i wouldn't expect des moines to do any better if they were in the same boat

Buffalo Roch Albany 44,45,46 oddly enough. i think that's where those 5 need to come from, i think Syr is tapped out

 

[Scooch]

that's why i tried to think of it in terms of ranking. because when i look at population, I end up falling into the trap of thinking that everyone can support a team. big number population, small number seats - easy! i'm sure you have much better data than i do, i quickly scrambled to find onondaga's rank and ran with that

with our basketball capacity being double a normal one, it's really like we're asking those million people to support a football team, a basketball team and a hockey team.

wikipedia says syracuse is the 64th CSA. it's just a wild guess but i wouldn't expect des moines to do any better if they were in the same boat

Buffalo Roch Albany 44,45,46 oddly enough. i think that's where those 5 need to come from, i think Syr is tapped out

We agree about two things.

(1) Syracuse outhits its weight in terms of attendance when you combine football and hoops. I posted that analysis a couple weeks ago and it was stunning to me to see how well we fared on that combined metric. When you consider how much we draw for hoops, and that we're drawing from a small-ish population base in that regard (football factories in podunk towns pull in people from all over their state on fall Saturdays and then tend to draw flies to weeknight winter hoops games, so their population base is functionally much larger) we do pretty damn well.

(2) SU really needs to expand their base. I've been crowing about that since I first started posting on boards in the mid-90s. We have a large hoops fanbase in western NY because the team has been so good for so long. If the football program can continue to improve we should market the hell out of it there too. There are brand positives for doing what we did in NYC, but there are tangible attendance benefits to marketing SU football more to people in WNY and the Southern Tier.

 

[xc84]

The other thing that I dislike about putting all the chips in the "winning" basket is that you leave yourself banking on a lot of things you can't really control - how good the team is, how the schedule lines up, etc.

Of course you need winning to be a part of the experience, but there are other things you can proactively do to make the experience better that you actually can control. I mean, I don't know if people actually read the article, but winning programs are having attendance issues. The answer isn't just win more, it's about finding out if your product fits your audience, and if it doesn't, tweak the product until it brings in the crowds. You do that by knowing your audience and understanding why they're staying away. There are reasons, among them winning, why the experience hasn't been enough to draw people.

At SU, a winning program has been enough. See the 90s. The are staying away because they lack confidence that SU can win. That's the part of the experience they haven't liked lately.

 

[Scooch]

The other thing that I dislike about putting all the chips in the "winning" basket is that you leave yourself banking on a lot of things you can't really control - how good the team is, how the schedule lines up, etc.

Of course you need winning to be a part of the experience, but there are other things you can proactively do to make the experience better that you actually can control. I mean, I don't know if people actually read the article, but winning programs are having attendance issues. The answer isn't just win more, it's about finding out if your product fits your audience, and if it doesn't, tweak the product until it brings in the crowds. You do that by knowing your audience and understanding why they're staying away. There are reasons, among them winning, why the experience hasn't been enough to draw people.

Otto, are you suggesting that if we fill the air with footballs and start scoring 45 points/game, but are still just winning the same 6-7 games/year that we have been recently, that we'll draw meaningfully more people?