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Message: [QUOTE="Stern, post: 1987260, member: 527"] Fans want to support a winner. Period. End of story. Debate over. SU Basketball packs them in in Nov and Dec when we play nobody and garbage teams, why...because the team is gonna win and its a party atmosphere where people have fun for 2 hours. When you take into account for football we have a ceiling of "local/student" fans that go to the game no matter who we play. Any time we get a super big crowd its because the opponent travels well. So if we schedule USF we will have the same amount of "local/SU" fans in the Dome as if we scheduled Ball St or Buffalo! So why not schedule Ball St or Buffalo and give yourself the easiest and best chance of a win. Same for the big 1 P5 school we have to schedule. Whether its LSU or Purdue, or Iowa St or whoever, we will get the same amount of SU fans in the dome for that given day. So, you schedule to win, go to 5 or 6 or 7 bowls in a row. Start to go from 6 wins on a regular basis, to 7 on a regular basis, to 8 wins on a regular basis and so on. Grow it over time...then guess what, the local fans will be happy the football team is always a winner. It becomes [I][B]fun[/B][/I] to go to the game and watch them "WIN"...and that is how you fill the dome and grow the product over time. What SU football does is "hot shot" scheduling. We will schedule 1 monster home game a year most years (ie vs LSU or whoever)...we have no shot to win, the fans will be upset we didn't win and look 2nd rate vs them, for one day the Dome is rocking for like 15 min before LSU or whoever takes the crowd out of the game...and the fans go home miserable (and at halftime) saying I just wasted a Saturday and didn't have fun. Last time I do that. So for that 1 day SU makes some $$$ but the damage they do to the fan-base and the product isn't worth it. Schedule to win. Do it for many years and the fans will come back. These games are played on Friday Nights and Saturday's. It's the weekend...people wanna have fun. It's no fun to spend 4 hours and watch the team lose and pay money to do it. That's how the casual fan thinks and until SU starts thinking like that, nothing will change and its an endless cycle. As a die-hard like me, I would rather watch them play Buffalo and win than watch them play USF and lose. When I leave my house I wanna see them win. I get the "big game" atmosphere every year when FSU or Clemson come to the Dome. We don't need to go through that 2 or 3 times a year and see the mass exodus at halftime. [/QUOTE]

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