To the SU students and recent grads

[Orange87]

Those games against league doormats would never make tv back in the day. Now you can see every game on tv. We will never again come close to the avg game attendance of that era of SU basketball for that reason alone. We are not comparing apples to apples here.

You're wrong. Every game was televised locally. I remember because it was tough to get a ticket but at least you could watch 'em at the frat house.

 

[JLine]

Disappointing new senior class and lost a good group of seniors the past two years. These new kids just don't seem to care much.

 

[AluminNV]

I think that the fans up until the last 3-4 years were so passionate and loyal the administration over charged them. I graduated 5 years ago like a couple people on this thread and agree with them about how into it everyone was. People were caring about all the games not just high profile one. And now its biting SU since the kids will watch the midweek games on TV and not spend that money. I guess we were suckers back then and recently wised up. The seats are awful and its overpriced. And the night class thing is real, even though a lot of that is college kids not wanting to wake up for 8ams.

I stopped buying seasons when I moved out of the dorms and still went to games and just hit up scalpers for lowers or bought for the student price and tried to move into decent seats. The student section stinks I hated sitting there for hoops. I hated having to get there early top.


Give the kids some good seats and they'll have incentive to go. OR make lower profile games 5-10 bucks for them. And drop student season prices. 100 for both football and basketball not just one.

 

[maxxyz]

My niece just graduated from SUNY ESF and her student season tix for SU Basketball games were $120 last year. I'm guessing the $26 price is for a single game ticket.

They want to encourage students to go to all games, not just the high profile ones. So they give a good deal on seasons, not individuals. Also, just like regular tickets this policy helps discourage student ticket scalping which is problematic.

 

[Col. Bleep]

I dont remember ever having a class past 3pm in my 9 years of college.

I don't remember having a class.
And how did you get out in only 9 years???!

By way of comparison, Duke grad & professional students who win the ticket lottery can purchase season tix for $200.
That works out to $12.50 per home game.

 

[HastingsCuse]

As a parent of a current senior here is the deal: Student season tickets for basketball and football in 2009 were $115 for football and $160 for basketball or $235 if you bought both. In 2010 it was $100 for football and $120 for basketball. The past 2 years I think it was the same but I can't find my receipt. For games not on the student season ticket package (e.g. winter break games from mid-December to mid-January) and students without season tickets, students pay $26. per basketball game.
FYI For the last 2 years my son has had at least 1 class that ended at 7 PM or later. (also for the last 4 semesters only 1 class started before 11 and he has had no Friday classes.) For 1 class that ended at 7 pm on Mondays last year, 1 professor scheduled a test on the the night of a home Big Monday game.)

 

[TBCuse11]

whatever the reason, it is very apparent that our student section does not bring the same energy and passion lately as other big programs. Luckily for the Orange, we have a phenomenal base of alumni who pick up the slack. (exception being the 90 yr old couples who sit there and read books during the games).

 

[DCCuse]

$26 is absurd. The school must have a bunch of hidden problems if it feels the need to charge that.

Hopefully this will be rectified when we get the additional ACC money. No way should they be charging students like that.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

[warrickisgod]

I took a Sports Marketing class with Mr. Excitement (Mike Veley) in 2005 and he told us that the students were moved to behind the basket because they weren’t showing up when they were on the sides and it was embarrassing (also probably cost them lots of $).

Other interesting facts from that class:
· It was held on Thursday nights from 7-10pm (lots of classes are that late when the teachers are adjuncts)
· He had us write papers on how we would improve the experience for fans at the dome. He definitely stole ideas from all the papers. I know ours had better cushioned seats and painting walls orange. We also had a crazy idea to build a mini dome outside on the ESF campus for pregame festivities, no go on that so far.

 

[armory]

Hopefully this will be rectified when we get the additional ACC money. No way should they be charging students like that.

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Yeah, as much as I rag on the student section this year, I'm kind of shocked they are charging them for admission. As if $50,000 a year isn't enough?

 

[rrlbees]

I took a Sports Marketing class with Mr. Excitement (Mike Veley) in 2005 and he told us that the students were moved to behind the basket because they weren’t showing up when they were on the sides and it was embarrassing (also probably cost them $$$

Veley is 100% right.

Sent using my Commodore 64

 

[SoBeCuse]

Those games against league doormats would never make tv back in the day. Now you can see every game on tv. We will never again come close to the avg game attendance of that era of SU basketball for that reason alone. We are not comparing apples to apples here.

There is definitely some truth to this. Good point but other fanbases represent and make noise vs cupcakes or league doormats.

 

[Calcuse]

When I was a senior, I believe season tickets for basketball were about $40. Of course back then, the ball still had corners.

 

[SBU72]

These prices you quote must be for single games. A co-worker of mine has a freshman at SU and he told me season tix for students were something like $150. When I was at SU (87-91) it worked out to $5 a game on the season plan. I'm of the opinion that students should get in for free.

We expected to win every game when I was there and we turned out in droves, even for the early season cupcakes. BE games averaged about 25k fans with all big games on weekends drawing 32k.

The student demographics have changed a lot with a higher percentage of foreign students who don't care about American sports, sadly.

Wikipedia shows that SU has over 20,000 students (14,000 undergrad, 6,000 grad). How large a foreign population is there to change the # attending that much. Yeah, I konw foreign students are supposed to be more serious but part of college life is doing young people things and some of them have get into American sports. How else do you think basketball has spread world wide. Also look at Duke. 14000 students and more grad students than undergrad and look at their student section! I could go on and on. It just looks like that SU student section has less in it than most other schools. Is the school to blame for cost and location of the seats so kids are disinterested?

 

[cusetown1]

$26 is absurd. The school must have a bunch of hidden problems if it feels the need to charge that.

Well it could be worse, you could be Providence and have to pay your students to go.

 

[JoeSU]

When I was a senior, I believe season tickets for basketball were about $40. Of course back then, the ball still had corners.

When I was a student back in the dark ages (late 70s), I believe a season athletic pass (good for admission to all football & hoops games) was $25. Of course, we were still playing in Archbold and Manley at the time. I seem to recall your student ID had some kind of sticker or punch, so you didn't need to pick-up tickets - you just showed your ID for admission.

 

[dollarbill44]

Wikipedia shows that SU has over 20,000 students (14,000 undergrad, 6,000 grad). How large a foreign population is there to change the # attending that much. Yeah, I konw foreign students are supposed to be more serious but part of college life is doing young people things and some of them have get into American sports. How else do you think basketball has spread world wide. Also look at Duke. 14000 students and more grad students than undergrad and look at their student section! I could go on and on. It just looks like that SU student section has less in it than most other schools. Is the school to blame for cost and location of the seats so kids are disinterested?

I don't know how accurate that 14,000 number is. I asked a friend of mine who was a long-time SU employee (fairly high up in Dome operations) why the student attendance is so low and the higher percentage of foreign students was his answer.

 

[OttoMets]

Hard for me to relate, since I had the package season tickets for basketball and football, but I'll add my two cents.

Night classes draw some students away from mid-week games. That's not very big, but it's something. There's also other events that occur on campus; things like greek events and stuff.

Sometimes after a long day of work/class, students would simply just rather watch it on TV in their warm dorm/apartment.

If I understand correctly, big east games are 26$ for students. Might not seem like a lot but to the average, casual SU student/fan, you pick and choose your games. 26$ is a few weekends of drinking if you plan accordingly.

And yes, I think SU does a horrible job at making it easy for students to attend the games.

Respectfully disagree with some of that.

Regarding night classes, ostensibly a similar number of students had the same Wednesday night classes last year, when almost 28,000 people showed up for Georgetown at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night for Game 17 (the same time, day, and game as last night).

It seems that there is a core of diehards who go to all or most games, and then a couple thousand who get excited about Georgetown but don't care about Providence or Notre Dame. Some on here have speculated that that's because SU draws heavily from the Northeast and more kids are raised as professional fans who don't really have a tie to the college game but can be persuaded to go to the big event. Don't know if that's so, but it's reasonable.

Also, single-game tickets are high. But aren't those for the very casual fans? If you're an SU student who actually roots for the team, I can't imagine that you'd buy single-game tickets.

I think my colleagues who buy the football/basketball season package pay $100 or $150 for that privilege. While it wouldn't be fair to comment on whether or not that's prohibitive for many students, it's certainly a far cry from $26 per game.

Finally, I think there's something to the idea that we're all spoiled. Too many great regular seasons in a row + four losses + huge exodus of seniors and other talent = decreased attendance. And this is historically the case re: talent exodus - same thing happened after 1990, 1996, 2000, and 2005. Fans build interest following Coleman, Wallace, Hart, Warrick, or Scoop; then interest is bound to wane after their senior-year attendance spike.

The first-semester schedule stunk - very few games with students on campus - so it may have been more difficult for students to build an attachment to the team, but I don't know enough to blame the school for that. A lot of those scheduling matters are out of their hands. Not sure how the school could do a better job in actually getting kids in the seats (short of mandating a dead period for student clubs and activities during game times or something similarly autocratic).

Edit: One more thing, regarding Greek events. Last year's Saturday afternoon West Virginia game would ordinarily be a sure-fire 30,000 crowd. It wasn't; the student section was two-thirds empty. Evidently rush events were scheduled that day. Dumb, right? Hopefully they wouldn't repeat that mistake.

This season we were on the road for the last weekend of rush; St. John's was in the Dome the next weekend. Guaranteed 30,000+. And we drew 1,000 fewer than we did for WVU last season.

So Greek events hurt, without a doubt. But there's something else at play this season.

Why do you think the students are not coming to the games? I am especially curious about the expense of the tickets. I have heard that the school does NOT give the students a break, price-wise. (We already know they shafted them with the seats!) If it's the discouraging ticket prices, it seems the administration could be pressured to do something about that. I would suggest a public shaming. But perhaps it's something other than money.

Please, enlighten us! We await your responses with bated breaths (and some with beer breaths).

 

[Flacusian]

The fact that every game can be watched pretty much anywhere certainly comes into play. People with Iphones and droids can watch ESPN3 and ESPN , you can watch on your computer and heck, you can take the $26 bucks, buy some beer and some weed and watch it where you want with impunity. Times have changed from when a basketball game was "the event" and if you didn't go to the game chances were you weren't going to be able to see it.

 

[Halfmooncuse]

What do you expect for $53,000 a year! Cheap bastards. They all grow up to be takers.

 

[Marsh01]

I don't remember having a class.
And how did you get out in only 9 years???!

I was in all advanced classes. Made it easier

 

[TBCuse11]

whatever the allotment is for students, it needs to be cut in half. sad, but true.

 

[Marsh01]

The fact that every game can be watched pretty much anywhere certainly comes into play. People with Iphones and droids can watch ESPN3 and ESPN , you can watch on your computer and heck, you can take the $26 bucks, buy some beer and some weed and watch it where you want with impunity. Times have changed from when a basketball game was "the event" and if you didn't go to the game chances were you weren't going to be able to see it.

This is the main reason why attendance has dropped. Back in the 80's they blacked out most home games and if you wanted to watch the game, you had to get your butt up to the dome. Now with every game being on TV its much easier for people to say screw it, I'm staying home and watching it in HD.

 

[OttoMets]

...
Also, I am 42 and have a bunch of people working for me in their late 20's and early 30's. They can barely go 5 minutes without checking their phones, updating Facebook, tweeting, etc. It is ridiculous - you go to a restaurant with them and nobody can carry a conversation these days all they do is diddle their phones. Can't imagine the attention span of a 18 - 22 year old is much better these days maybe a sporting event is just too long to hold their attention.

This, too. No doubt in my mind.

 

[OttoMets]

I am shocked that its $26 a game. I would have guessed about $100 for the entire season.

It is.

They definitely want to disincentivize picking and choosing from a handful of single game.