BCI digs deeper into the basketball attendance issue. I think all the factors they mention contribute to the overall shortfall. No one seemed to like my solution of having fewer seats for hoops.
Matt Tennant is on the Rimington Trophy Watch List. I am unconcerned about his trophies. I just want him healthy.
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Good attempt by the BCI guys to come up with some reasons for the poor attendance at bball games.
And a good response by conlonc on that blog and one whose spirit I agree with and have already enunciated on this blog.
I think it's overly simplistic, regression analysis and all, to state that if you win, people will show. Well, yeah. But those numbers in the graph seem to me to speak to another story, too. Were it as simple as win and people will get in, then that wouldn't account for some of the discrepancies in those numbers and the previous year's record. It might tell the general story--and the argument that the more you win, the more support you'll get is obvious--but, at the end of the day, we play in a small arena that even during the Dudley/Smith days was embarrassingly sparsely filled to the extent that national commentators would mention it during broadcasts.
Maybe it's a confluence of reasons. But really, in my mind, there's enough contradictory evidence with those numbers to suggest that it's not as simple as winning or the economy.
I remember going to all of the games between '92-'96 and, as the graph demonstrates, the arena was mostly filled to capacity (with teams that were only comparable to the Dudley/Smith ones, not better, incl. the '93 Final Eight team). Some of that was helped by the opponent-UConn traveled very well, for example--and the antipathy old Big East rivalries conjoured up in the students (who were seated in the upper decks). Perhaps students today just can't muster up the energy to dislike UVA and Wake. And maybe I've romanticized how easy (and fun) it was to go to those games back in the '90s and assume everyone would feel the same as I did.
At the end of the day, however, I still think BC needs to right the ship. And quickly.
It's possible that we just don't know how to be really good fans.
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