Ohio Attendance

[JRHEETER]

Your conflating the current state of fairs as if it was 1999 or 2000. Since McNabb graduated in 1998 the program has had slightly more then a handful of years at best where they had true winning seasons an even some of those were ones where SU had to rockfight and scratch to get 6 wins. It's surprising that SU has the fanbase it does at this point when you look at what' its gone through since the 01 season with Freeney.

Look at the NE programs overall, outside of Penn State who is crushing attendance? BC is constantly struggling and below SU, Pitt had a nice turnaround the last few years but they aren't close to selling out Rutgers has played in half empty stadiums save for a handful of game when they inflight attendance numbers and Uconn could play their games at a local HS field and still have room.

Gameday atmosphere works when teams are winning. Even during the Mcnabb era SU wasn't exactly a can't miss atmosphere. The on campus stadium makes room a major issue, the parking situation can be a hot mess, tailgating can be difficult to near impossible if you don't have a parking pass or don't want to hike up to Manley and SU until the last decade or so wasn't exactly rolling out the red carpet for people to trample all over the quad.

Your yearning for an era of the late 80's to late 90s that no longer exists. A large portion of those fans are either no longer in the area or have passed away. SU has shown glimpses of returning to big crowds and if Brown can put together some early wins tickets will move. SU's prices aren't outrageous versus the rest of the country but if you don't have seasons attending an SU game isn't exactly cheap if your looking for decent seats and not just happy getting into the building.

* I'd also note that it doesn't help that SU gets very little attendance from it's alumni in the NE especially NYC*

Heck, I think you can argue that Syracuse University itself drives away the casuals.

Everything is a headache to deal with, with them.

Trying to get the tailgate assembled this spring and summer was a nightmare and Syracuse wasn’t really quick to help to be honest.

And the SyraCRUZ tailgate is PAYING some of THEIR athletes.

Forget about it if you are just a regular Joe looking to attend.

Syracuse will always have an attendance problem unless it’s winning a ton of games OR the university embraces itself as P4 Football program (unlikely to happen)

 

[FasterCuse]

Not to keep adding on as an apologist, but this area isn't exactly flush with cash either and it's not cheap to bring a family of 4 to an SU football game. Even if you can get tickets for $15/each after fees, you have to add on $30 to park, probably another $50-$100 if you want to buy food and snacks (not including alcoholic beverages), so all in you could be looking at $200 bucks to bring your family to an opponent they haven't heard of or they don't care to see. Many will hold on to their money and come to a more noteworthy game because they can only afford to bring their family to one game a year.

 

[JeremyCuse]

Putting aside the Covid year the team overall hasn’t been a train wreck or dumpster fire 2018 on. 21-11 at home those five years, 33-30 overall.

BC last year, FSU the year before, and Rutgers the year before that are the only real bad home games the last three years.

It hasn’t been great, but I reserve dumpster fire for Grobian levels of performance.

The school has dome a good job with the update to the dome, but they are making it progressively harder to get there. Removing 81 isn’t going to help.

If your looking to pull in the casual fan or the general fan then yes it's still been less then a stellar performance from 2018 on. When your best year is 7 wins it's hard to get that general fan even if the overall performance was light year better then the Grob era.

The 2019 team had massive expectations and couldn't get out of it's own way and finished under .500

The 2020 squad was affected significantly by Covid but it was still a hot mess and a real bad look

The 2021 team was again under .500

The 2022 team had a great start but as usual under Dino was a hot mess the 2nd half of the season

2023 team wash rinse repeat 2022.

The parking situation isn't great and the 81 construction/fiasco is really not going to help.

 

[JRHEETER]

If your looking to pull in the casual fan or the general fan then yes it's still been less then a stellar performance from 2018 on. When your best year is 7 wins it's hard to get that general fan even if the overall performance was light year better then the Grob era.

The 2019 team had massive expectations and couldn't get out of it's own way and finished under .500

The 2020 squad was affected significantly by Covid but it was still a hot mess and a real bad look

The 2021 team was again under .500

The 2022 team had a great start but as usual under Dino was a hot mess the 2nd half of the season

2023 team wash rinse repeat 2022.

The parking situation isn't great and the 81 construction/fiasco is really not going to help.

The parking situation is the worst it’s ever been for this coming season.

Mix that with people that lost their seats, couldn’t get groups together etc and there is absolutely no wonder that ticket sales have been slow.

You can only scorn people so many times before they turn their backs on you

 

[JeremyCuse]

The parking situation is the worst it’s ever been for this coming season.

Mix that with people that lost their seats, couldn’t get groups together etc and there is absolutely no wonder that ticket sales have been slow.

You can only scorn people so many times before they turn their backs on you

The Dome being where it is makes parking a tough situation to begin with.
However, SU has compounded the issue by transitioning the Sheraton to student housing, taking over the one public parking garage that was near the Dome (the one at the opposite end of where the VA garage is) and not working out a deal for the disputed area now controlled by ESF that is a loss of probably another hundred + spots easily.

SU has to make moves to help increase the availability versus hurting it.

 

[orangenauburn]

Is that field at Euclid and Comstock available to turn into a multilevel garage? Like five or six levels?

I know there would need to be traffic pattern adjustments.

That would be a huge draw for those coming from the eastern burbs.

 

[rocklloyd]

First day of member/member tournament. Gonna be tight turnaround but will be at game, in seats on time.

 

[JuiceMeUp]

You aren’t completely wrong. But, I’ll put it this way, we have a generation of fans lost to pathetic performance. Growing up in the area it was engrained into our youth to be a Cuse basketball fan in the 2008-14 era. It was pushed on us in a good way because the return on fandom investment was there. Not once growing up was cuse football ever mentioned in schools by teachers etc. while on the other hand my classmates and I viewed the bball team as full blown Hollywood celebrities. This is 100000% a show me area of the country, very blue collard. And I don’t think it’s complete laziness and that’s why people spend money at the amp, it’s the fact that they are getting a complete return on their fandom. They KNOW they’re going to a concert and will leave entertained. How many would show up to the amp if out of 6 concerts they attended yearly, the artist barely performed any hits and had horrible vocals for 4 of them. You think they would still go because it’s easy? My generation has a thought process of regardless of what happened in the off-season, that cuse football “sucks”. There are a ton of people in the area who have that engrained in their brains, and we know why. We have overall sucked for 95% of their lifetime.

Win and they will come. Create a culture of winning that bleeds organically down into our youth and it becomes “the cool thing to do”. That’s just the type of fans we have, for better and for worse. I mean look at our beloved basketball school and its attendance in the latter part of JBs tenure…. Not great in comparison to the recent past. We don’t have a rabid southern fanbase where regardless they show up, we have to prove it and the dome will be packed if we are actual contenders and are proven contenders.

That’s just my opinion!

Growing up in a similar era as you I can 100% attest. Cuse basketball might as well been the Boston Celtics to us. Any time Cuse played in the BE tourney or March Madness class was shut down and the game was pulled up on the projector for all to watch. I was one of the few that loved Cuse football as well, but that was because of my family not the surrounding environment. ALL of my buddies growing up were cuse basketball die hards... only a few were the same for football. In fact, a good number of my friends became fans of different schools solely for football because of how awful Syracuse was growing up. Unfortunately, they are losing a ton of interest in basketball now as well, but that's a different conversation. In my circle at least, football has the hype again. But, the same for them as many casuals, it's gonna take a few wins before they truly 1. Believe it and 2. Come out to support it.

 

[richmondcuse03]

Our biggest issue is most graduates don't make it back for games.

agree. Only way that changes is a positive experience when they're on campus. It's been two decades of trash -- it's amazing I come back after what I watched while a student.

 

[dwilmont44]

21-11 at home those five years

Colgate
Western Michigan
Army
Wake

Louisville
Purdue
Virginia
Wagner
NC State

Albany
Liberty
BC

Georgia Tech

Western Michigan
Holy Cross
Wake

Those are the teams they've beaten at home the last 5 seasons. A single P5 win at home each season except for 2022, which was a great year but is a clear outlier.

 

[OrgTruckPat]

Our biggest issue is most graduates don't make it back for games.

Too many of them before they become alums dont bother to go when they are students either. Its a bad combo and a big reason why SU (and most of us) had no qualms about reducing capacity by 6k plus for the new seats to be installed

 

[FrancoPizza]

There’s no denying it’s a PITA . It is a real barrier for people when choosing to go or watch on TV.

I’d say the constant commercial delays have become a bigger issue. 5 minute timeouts where we are pelted with stupid video promotions or field stunts that nobody cares about.

It’s almost like your team better be pretty darn good to compensate for those interruptions.

 

[TexanMark]

Agreed, it's last weekend for a lot of stuff and big weekends at camp etc

All the Travel Team stuff kills families going to games too. It makes the family poorer and kills their weekends.

 

[TexanMark]

Ding ding ding.

Tale as old as time.

My neighbor at camp thought we are playing tOSU

 

[syracuse95]

Too many of them before they become alums dont bother to go when they are students either. Its a bad combo and a big reason why SU (and most of us) had no qualms about reducing capacity by 6k plus for the new seats to be installed

Most SU students aren't from NY, didn't grow up as SU fans, and don't stay in NY after graduation. It's not that we have "bad students" or "bad alumni". We just have a very different student body than 95% of P4 schools. Our peers in that regard (think Duke, Wake, Northwestern) have the same attendance struggles that we do. In fact, we draw better than most schools with a similar student body makeup.

What's surprising isn't the fact that we struggle with attendance. It's the fact that Syracuse is still clinging to the thread of big time football given its location and student/alumni base. We may be disappointed or wish that wasn't reality, but that doesn't change what it is.

 

[upperdeck]

My neighbor at camp thought we are playing tOSU

so you bumped up the price of the ticket you sold him?

 

[TexanMark]

so you bumped up the price of the ticket you sold him?

He might be coming to the game with me

I told him Ohio State is wearing Green Uniforms in honor of the Irish that came down the Erie Canal and settled in Ohio

 

[Cusefan95]

It’s not just mediocre results - previous administrations had a hand in where we’re at. I knew a bunch of guys in my graduating class who stopped going to games after Jake’s “one horse town” fiasco - I realize he did a lot for building Syracuse athletics but he deserves a lot of blame for the problems we face now.

We’ve never been good enough since then to win back that generation of fans. I was able to get a couple of guys tentatively interested after 2018, actually managed to get a group to go on a road trip to Maryland “just like old times”…only it wasn’t as that was the worst sheetshow for Syracuse football since 62-0. Whatever interest I’d started to rekindle from old STH I’d tailgated with 25 years ago was successfully snuffed out by Dino in College Park.

We probably need two years (at least) of 9-10 win seasons to even have a chance at improving attendance at non-marquee games at Syracuse. Thinking a solid recruiting class means much is bizarre to me - because we’re so far from that mattering at all. Heck - I don’t think we’d see a significant change after a 10 win season!

 

[OrangeinBoston]

Winning solves all problems.

 

[Cusefan95]

My neighbor at camp thought we are playing tOSU

I still have an Ohio baseball cap (to go with my FGCU hoodie) to wear to Georgetown games. If those losers had lost to tOSU, I’d sure as heck wouldn’t have bought a cap to commemorate it.

 

[upperdeck]

we could got 10-2 this year and 5-7 wouldnt shock me with the schedule next yr

 

[SUATO92]

It’s not just mediocre results - previous administrations had a hand in where we’re at. I knew a bunch of guys in my graduating class who stopped going to games after Jake’s “one horse town” fiasco - I realize he did a lot for building Syracuse athletics but he deserves a lot of blame for the problems we face now.

We’ve never been good enough since then to win back that generation of fans. I was able to get a couple of guys tentatively interested after 2018, actually managed to get a group to go on a road trip to Maryland “just like old times”…only it wasn’t as that was the worst sheetshow for Syracuse football since 62-0. Whatever interest I’d started to rekindle from old STH I’d tailgated with 25 years ago was successfully snuffed out by Dino in College Park.

We probably need two years (at least) of 9-10 win seasons to even have a chance at improving attendance at non-marquee games at Syracuse. Thinking a solid recruiting class means much is bizarre to me - because we’re so far from that mattering at all. Heck - I don’t think we’d see a significant change after a 10 win season!

If I recall correctly SU football fans were also told to "get a life." Many took that advice and embarked on a new path without the team. I thought attacking the fans was wild but what do I know?

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I really wanted to be the first one to post one of these this year...never too early! Yes I know I'm crazy.

You shouldn't have.

You really shouldn't have.

 

[Chip]

My neighbor at camp thought we are playing tOSU

I hope you didn’t tell him otherwise.

And to spread the word.

 

[All4SU]

I hate when companies undercut their regulars. BUT, if we get inside of a week before game 1 and their are still tix available, they need to contact every Pop Warner coach in 315 and give them to kids. At least then you’re investing in the future. Them and military. Because, well because.

It’s game one of the HCFFB era. You can’t overestimate the perceived value of a packed dome. Especially when you cut the seats down to 42K. Fill it with kids and parents. Tell the Pop Warner kids they get a free soda if they wear their football jersey.