Tired of Student excuses!...DID YOU KNOW...

[CPark Orange]

ugh. these "blame the student" threads are the worst. no excuses? incredibly short-sighted.

The support of this team by the students and the community is pathetic... However, the students don't have the "real world" excuse (family, kids, work, etc) to be excused from blame for lack of support!

If Syracuse truly wants to have a great team... it needs great support!!

 

[IthacaBarrel]

The night games should be better attended, I think the student section is fine

 

[OrangeinBoston]

that students get season passes to football and basketball for $100? i was informed of this by a father of an SU frosh. so whats the excuse? thats worth it for basketball alone! i dont care if tuition is 100k/year...thats a great deal and come on...its like the guy that drives the cigar boat, hell if he can drive that kinda boat...the he can certainly afford the gas. these students arent poor!!! they will blow $100 on marshall street that night. get the heck outta bed, prime up for the nooner...go back to your dorm a shanked punt away and nap for 4 hours and be ready to rip it up that night!!! big ten schools have tens of thousands of students pumped and in place for 11 am local starts!!!

enough excuses!!!!

Tired of this B.S. The student section is very well represented. The problem is the lack of casual fan attendance. So, blame the locals and you'd be closer to being right.

That being said, increased attendance will come with consistent winning. My guess is that there will be a better turn out this week because people see that the team is 3 - 1 and may be worth watching.

 

[SmilinBob]

Us vs them, the cool blame game. I think it's a we problem and I'm so sick of the stupid excuses people keep continuing to pound out. If you're a fan of SU football just try to go to the games to support the football team, local, person who lives close enough to drive to Syracuse and students. The empty seats are embarrassing so why not put some bucks down and make a nice day of it?

 

[CuseCrew08]

I was able to go to the game this weekend. The student section was indeed pathetic, as was the rest of the sections. I truely beleive the biggest factor in student section turnout is the start time. Students just do not have enough time to roll out of bed, grab breakfast somewhere, sober up enough to start drinking again all before noon. A 3:30 or later start would be perfect for students (and probably locals too). I also think this is why there are some weeknight games. I guarantee this Toledo game was Friday or Saturday night that the student section would be twice as full.

And to those who say "well why don't the students just go to bed early Friday night so they can get up?" Well... college students just don't work that way haha

 

[rrlbees]

Tired of this B.S. The student section is very well represented. The problem is the lack of casual fan attendance. So, blame the locals and you'd be closer to being right.

That being said, increased attendance will come with consistent winning. My guess is that there will be a better turn out this week because people see that the team is 3 - 1 and may be worth watching.

The problem is season tickets not necessarily the casual walk up fan (who should get seasons). Also, the student section is not any better represented than the others.

 

[bnoro]

Was that the early order price?

I think that was the student price, I'm pretty sure most of the tickets for that show were sold in the first 10 minutes, I know people who bought them at 10:15 (15 mins after they went on sale) and were upper deck.

 

[cusestudent]

The biggest issue definitely is the start time of the game and AD Gross should address that because none of the students are going to go to the game because most won't go unless they're drunk already. Plus, who wants to tailgate at 9 in the morning? Not to mention the people that come from out of town have to be up that much earlier. As die-hards we don't realize that people sometimes have other things going on in their lives other than SU football. My brother plays JV football for a local school, and I will never be able to see him play sports his senior year or in college (he already has D-1 offers in baseball as a freshman) because I will be on some military base or deployed after I commission. My family is more important to me than SU football even though I grew up a die hard fan and go to the school.

 

[Scooch]

Noon kickoffs are a problem when the program has been various shades of crappy for nearly a decade and we're playing the Toledos of the college football world.

If have no doubt that if we were a legit top 20 program and playing, say, Clemson at noon, we'd have 45K+ and a full student section.

The gap between where we are (~35K) and where we need to be (~45) is not that large, all things considered. Win and we'll be fine.

 

[Scooch]

Most Big Ten schools kick off at 11am or Noon. It's not the time, it's the lack of an avid fanbase.

 

[cusestudent]

How many undergrads do the Big Ten schools have? What is the size of the city and suburbs around them? How many have a better history than SU?

I can name 7 teams off the top of my head that beat us in at least two of those categories.
OSU
Michigan
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Iowa
Penn State
Michigan State

 

[kingottoiii]

What is the percentage of the student body showing up for SU games vs other schools? I think people need to realize that SU has 1/3 the number of students that these other schools have. IMO the student section has always been too big. The area between 102 and 103 should go to C and D level like it is on the opposite side. That is 600 seats less that are really not needed by the students.

 

[cmr27]

I wonder if the student demographic profile has changed such that the typical SU student is less predisposed to like football than their predessors. SU may be admitting kids who have less money than those who attended in 1998 or 1990. Or, maybe the students admitted have less interest in sports, for whatever reason. I wonder if the admissions people have made a change in their acceptance profile that is impacting attendance. For example, if football is less popular in NY State, relative to New Jersey or California or Florida, then a higher influx of in-state and specifically upstate students would point to lower attendance. Maybe we're admitting more students who list music and drama as their primary extracurriculars rather than sports... Or, maybe I'm wrong. Just thinking out loud.

 

[Scooch]

I wonder if the student demographic profile has changed such that the typical SU student is less predisposed to like football than their predessors. SU may be admitting kids who have less money than those who attended in 1998 or 1990. Or, maybe the students admitted have less interest in sports, for whatever reason. I wonder if the admissions people have made a change in their acceptance profile that is impacting attendance. For example, if football is less popular in NY State, relative to New Jersey or California or Florida, then a higher influx of in-state and specifically upstate students would point to lower attendance. Maybe we're admitting more students who list music and drama as their primary extracurriculars rather than sports... Or, maybe I'm wrong. Just thinking out loud.

I think there may be something to do this. Not so much to make it more of a driving force over the win total of the team, but something.

Speaking as a parent and SU alum, the cost of private college tuition these days borders on obscene. When I was at SU the thought of missing a game to do schoolwork was silly, but today with the money involved I think kids need to have different priorities.

 

[dollarbill44]

I would like to know what the student count was when CUSE played Tennessee in 1998. Being in the student section that day it was full 30 minutes before game time and security was dealing with overcrowding of the section. Then again in 98, there may have been a "smaller" allocated student section as the rest of the building was sold-out.

From my time on campus and with home openers against UNC (McNabb's sophomore year post the Clemson Gator bowl beat down), NC State (after destroying Wisconsin in the kickoff classic), Tennessee (two top 15 teams) and Michigan, I find it hard to believe that this year's Wake Forest game is the all-time Dome record for student attendance unless in the years since more tickets have been allocated to students in place of regular fans.

It was a very good student turnout, but I too, can't believe it was better than the '87 PSU and WVU games. Although, I guess they may have made more student seating available for the WF game than were available for those games.

 

[dollarbill44]

I think there may be something to do this. Not so much to make it more of a driving force over the win total of the team, but something.

Speaking as a parent and SU alum, the cost of private college tuition these days borders on obscene. When I was at SU the thought of missing a game to do schoolwork was silly, but today with the money involved I think kids need to have different priorities.

I can say with certainty that this is a big part of the problem. The student make up has changed to one with a much higher percentage of foreign students who have no interest in American sports than even 10 years ago.

 

[CuseOrange15]

On another attendance thread someone mentioned tarping the corners or the top few rows of the 300s to give the dome the appearance of being fuller. Why is this not an option? I think everyone agrees that Syracuse’s fan base itself is the problem, so why not adjust the capacity of the dome to fit the interest level?

If the corners were tarped it would lower capacity by nearly 6000, making the dome appear more condensed. Doesn’t that solve the problem that most of us have with the dome appearing empty during games? We know we wont get 45-50k, but we can draw 40-42k. I think everyone would agree that those types of attendance numbers would be acceptable if the dome appeared full and near capacity. My suggestion is to tarp off 6-8000 seats. This would also create more of a demand for tickets as you are lowering supply closer to that of the demand. If average attendance and demand rises enough to justify it, just adjust the tarped seating for the following season.

Also, why do we charge students to attend games? Some universities include mandatory fees which cover ticket fees for each student in their tuition. Is it not possible to raise the tuition by $300 and include access to every sporting event with tuition?

Wouldn’t a combination of those boost attendance and demand while creating the illusion of a full stadium?

 

[BlackKnight76]

It was a very good student turnout, but I too, can't believe it was better than the '87 PSU and WVU games. Although, I guess they may have made more student seating available for the WF game than were available for those games.

There were a ton of students who were put up in the 300s because we overflowed even after adding the second endzone section

 

[BlackKnight76]

Also, why do we charge students to attend games? Some universities include mandatory fees which cover ticket fees for each student in their tuition. Is it not possible to raise the tuition by $300 and include access to every sporting event with tuition?

They're considering this, at least for football. I think the ACC money might free us up to try stuff like this.

 

[Shermthegeneral]

I have to be honest, when I was in college I didn't have much money at all! I don't know if I would have been able to afford the season passes. I probably would have bought the good games from friends who couldn't go or scalped them. Tickets should be 5 bucks a game, it is there school!

 

[PeteCalvin]

It's not $100 for both. It's $100 for Football, $235 for the combo. Trust me on this one.

Those aren't excuses, those are explanations. No one on this board is more upset by a shitty student section than I am, since I spend a lot of time working on student section stuff. It's been an absolute struggle trying to solve the issue, so I take it a bit personally when people from the outside just yell about how bad it is without adding anything of substance.

And have you noticed what games are the worst for the student section? It's the same games where none of the regular fans show up either. The students run in the same pattern as the fanbase as a whole. It's not a "student section" problem in particular, it is a greater Syracuse fan base problem.

For students and townies to go and never want to miss a minute, you have to make it a must be there event. The football team has something to do with that, and they are doing their part. Noon starts suck, so you have to factor that in. Tailgating needs to be supported more than it is (ie getting better locales set up).

Personally, I would never miss a game if they made Tone Loc the public address announcer and the sororities ran a naked mile in the Quad before each game.

 

[Orangetradition44]

Personally I think it's silly that SU charges $235 for student tix. Short-term thinking.

Get these kids hooked, by any means necessary, and one of them may be funding a new facility someday.

Completely agree with this.

 

[Scooch]

Tarps look worse than empty seats.

 

[NailstheCusefan12]

How many undergrads do the Big Ten schools have? What is the size of the city and suburbs around them? How many have a better history than SU?

I can name 7 teams off the top of my head that beat us in at least two of those categories.
OSU
Michigan
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Iowa
Penn State
Michigan State

Add Illinois. 44,000 undergrad

 

[NailstheCusefan12]

Do what u gotta do and stop ur complaining. if thats what it takes then do it.But u might better stop blaming the people working for a living to to support they families while giving the drunk students a free pass because they are TO FUKKING HUNGOVER to get to a game.The more that school shits on the general public, the farther the the school is gonna push the general public away.and that goes for ur crap to blackknight

You're attacking the students that aren't the problem. If we post here, we clearly have a passion for the program. You're clearly delusional if you have any negative words to say about BK. He works his ass off to try to get students to come. He's not SU Football's marketing staff.