Taking the next step

[thumper_76]

Re: Taking the next step

Starkville, MS has 21,000 people and fills up a 62,000 seat stadium. Jacksonville, AL has 12,000 people and fills up a 23,000 seat stadium. Pullman Washington has 21,000 people and fills up a 35,000 seat stadium

Ok. All this proves is it can be done (which it can), but please don't tell me you honestly think it's just as easy to fill a stadium located in a town of 23,000 compared to a city with ten times the population. To try to prove otherwise is boarder line mental retardation.

In fact to do it you had to go pull from major P5 schools outside of one to try to find a similar situation.

I believe we will do it, and can do it. But to try to say it's the same thing as doing it in Fargo is the epitome of stupidity.

[scbison]

Re: Taking the next step

Ok. All this proves is it can be done (which it can), but please don't tell me you honestly think it's just as easy to fill a stadium located in a town of 23,000 compared to a city with ten times the population. To try to prove otherwise is boarder line mental retardation.

In fact to do it you had to go pull from major P5 schools outside of one to try to find a similar situation.

I believe we will do it, and can do it. But to try to say it's the same thing as doing it in Fargo is the epitome of stupidity.

So why build a 19,000 seat stadium if you can't fill it and have 200,000 excuses? Seems like a waste of money

[Jacked_Up]

Re: Taking the next step

So why build a 19,000 seat stadium if you can't fill it and have 200,000 excuses? Seems like a waste of money

You don't build a new stadium to meet yesterday's needs. You build one to meet future needs. So far, Dykhouse stadium has attracted crowds of more than 15,000 and 16,000 for two ordinary, nonconference games that featured visiting teams that hardly brought any fans. That's not a bad start. The best games on the Jacks' schedule are yet to come. Also, South Dakota is slightly bigger in population and more centrally located than North Dakota. Long term, the crowds in Brookings will be just fine, especially if the Jacks keep putting up winning seasons.

[KUlawJack]

Re: Taking the next step

So why build a 19,000 seat stadium if you can't fill it and have 200,000 excuses? Seems like a waste of money

Can't tell if serious.

[thumper_76]

Re: Taking the next step

So why build a 19,000 seat stadium if you can't fill it and have 200,000 excuses? Seems like a waste of money

Not a great reader are ya. Missed the part where I said it can be done I see. Don't be pissed because you're acting retarded and got called on it.

[scbison]

Re: Taking the next step

Not a great reader are ya. Missed the part where I said it can be done I see. Don't be pissed because you're acting retarded and got called on it.

Far from pissed but congrats on calling me a retard twice before Noon

[jack power]

Re: Taking the next step

Far from pissed but congrats on calling me a retard twice before Noon

Is twice less than normal?

[BitsTD]

Re: Taking the next step

I go up from Brandon every week that I can. Although I am sure we can do better, I-29 South is pretty busy after the games. It's not I-80 from Lincoln to Omaha, but there is plenty of traffic headed back south. I think SDSU has embraced SF, we just need to get more SF metroites to embrace SDSU. I am trying to get my neighbors from Kansas and southern MN more excited about games. I have brought both to numerous games in the last couple years. And hope to get a group together for the colder gaames at the end of the year.

[CappinHard]

Re: Taking the next step

This discussion has really been heavy on attendance, which is easy to debate. However, I am more concerned with how this program takes the next step in terms of going deep in the playoffs consistently. Doing that will obviously drive attendance numbers, and recruiting, and attitudes. But how do you get there in the first place? I don't think having larger attendance numbers will take us to the next step in terms of program success. We have gotten to the point of consistently making the playoffs. Just making them though. What needs to be done to go further? That's why I brought up coaching, because that will be a drastic change that could provide the push that this program needs. It almost feels like we're stuck in a rut and that the current regime has taken us as far as they can, with that rut being consistently making the playoffs, consistently bowing out in the first two rounds, and consistently losing to the bison.

[KUlawJack]

Re: Taking the next step

There is a lot of dumb in the original article. The stuff about recruiting outside of South Dakota? Like we haven't tried recruiting the kids he's talking about? One need only look through the past recruiting threads to see we've offered a number of those kids from Minnesota that have wound up at other programs. I'm glad its an opinion piece because there are hardly any facts in it and it doesn't have any research to back up the conclusory statements.

Win more? Duh. We all want to win more. However, we should also recognize we are having the best stretch of football played in Brookings since the late 50s and early 60s. Of course we want to get better and climb the mountain.

[91jack]

Re: Taking the next step

Are you honestly implying that NDSU faces the same challenges as SDSU in drawing fans to games? Trying to sell it as equal situations is ridiculous. Arguing that 230,000 is the same thing as 23,000, would be like arguing that winning the Great West Conference is almost like winning a national championship.

Here's what we're up against for increasing attendance from our South Dakota's largest city:

-Sioux Falls has two DII's who outdraw anything the Bison compete with. Both play in nearly brand new facilities. I could walk to either from my home in less time than it takes me to drive to and from Brookings.
-A DI that plays in our conference against teams the Sioux Falls fan might actually recognize
-Nebraska and Iowa football (I'm sure there are a TON of Minnesota Gophers diehards that never miss a game in Fargo)
-The big one: 2 extra hours of travel on gameday - I live in Central Sioux Falls and left home at 3:30 and got home at 11:15 from the last SDSU game against Cal Poly. Roughly 8 hours on a Saturday with about 30 minutes of "tailgating" that consisted of talking to acquaintances I bumped into as I walked to the stadium.

Despite all that, SDSU's attendance is top 20 in our division in attendance in a town of 23,000. The poor, unfortunate Bison have to try to draw fans who must choose between a lousy DI 75 minutes away, a DII or a DIII and could literally walk to the stadium!

I was at the Pentagon for a basketball tournament and I met a guy from Brandon. He said that he thought that all SDSU-USD games should be played in Sioux Falls. If they were, he would go and it would draw more SF fans.
I was at a Augie game earlier this season and there are other positives going there. It cost $8 to get into the game and you could sit at the 50 yard line. I think those tickets are around $40 at SDSU. I understand you can budget your money for that but if you are a young (just out of college) married couple, you might have other things to spend $100 on than a football game. Maybe a few years down the road when they are more established they can afford the games. The product is better but it also is more of a financial strain on some people.

[OldHare]

Re: Taking the next step

I remember when the Jackrabbits were committing to the D1 status. I thought Stig would be one of the first coaches to move to another job. I did not think he would adapt to the D1 athletics. Now cappinhard is saying something similar on getting to the next level. First of all, the next level ought not be described as a national title. Making the playoffs is now considered the last level already. (Another parallel would be the WBB team getting to the Sweet 16 versus getting into the big dance.) The door has been cracked for the Jackrabbits and other regional teams as the regional pairing only is being relaxed and the MVFC teams in particular will not be required to battle each other early in the playoffs. Taking the next step seems to be looking past the current accomplishments and asking when are we going to be national champs.

[GopherHole]

Re: Taking the next step

Looked at the population base within roughly 80 miles of Brookings. 410,000 people. This doesn't include communities like Mitchell or Yankton that routinely send many fans to Brookings for game day.

Yes, I understand that some casual fans from Sioux Falls may consider going to a D2 game on a Saturday in their backyard. However, until we create a culture where SDSU football is the market brand of choice in this region, we will have limited success with drawing casual fans.

Drawing fans from farther than 80 miles on a regular basis is not difficult to understand, once the culture has been laid. I live 2 hours west of Lincoln, NE and regularly do business up to 4 hours west of Lincoln. On Saturdays, it is common for my friends from this area to be in Lincoln, for the game and not at home watching it on TV. Every Husker game is on TV, so that can be difficult to compete with for many sports teams. Even the business I work at is a good representation. 85 employees, and our group has 10 season tickets for a game that takes roughly 7 hours to make the round trip with traffic, parking, and the headache of logistics. These fans budget roughly $250 per couple plus 10 hours of their Saturday to go to every home game.

I understand this is an apples and oranges comparison, but I share it to compare the culture. The culture is that every local TV and radio market focuses on Husker sports on a daily basis for at least 300 days per year. This is not having a segment on Husker sports, this is highlighting the latest developments on what happened a practice in Lincoln before highlighting a major local sporting event. It took time to build this market and obviously winning national championships was a key part of this. It was not the only key component. If it was, that market would have dried up multiple coaches ago.

We are on the right path with building the Jackrabbit brand. It has taken many steps and will take many more years before we can count on selling out a nearly 20,000 seat stadium on a regular basis. It will come, but it doesn't happen by making the leap to DI right away. It takes time after consistently qualifying for post season play, when the history before the jump to DI was rarely qualifying. It takes more time than 2 games to fill a gem of a stadium. My glass of beer is more than half full and I say "cheers" to all Jackrabbit fans be they rabid or casual fans!

[thumper_76]

Re: Taking the next step

This discussion has really been heavy on attendance, which is easy to debate. However, I am more concerned with how this program takes the next step in terms of going deep in the playoffs consistently. Doing that will obviously drive attendance numbers, and recruiting, and attitudes. But how do you get there in the first place? I don't think having larger attendance numbers will take us to the next step in terms of program success. We have gotten to the point of consistently making the playoffs. Just making them though. What needs to be done to go further? That's why I brought up coaching, because that will be a drastic change that could provide the push that this program needs. It almost feels like we're stuck in a rut and that the current regime has taken us as far as they can, with that rut being consistently making the playoffs, consistently bowing out in the first two rounds, and consistently losing to the bison.

There's a couple of things about this. We're dissatisfied with playoff results over the last couple of years. We're frustrated that we lose in the first or second round. The reality is winning in the playoffs is EXTREMELY hard. We suffer from being too close to NDSU to realize how good our success has been recently to be honest. Since we became eligible for the playoffs, we went from a program who had only made the playoffs once, ever, to making it four years in a row and winning two games there. However, this happened at the same time that NDSU has won 5 straight national championships, something that has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. Being that they are our rivals, it makes what we have done seem poor or barely making it by, because of how grand their accomplishments are. It's like you had a brother, and when you made your first million in a year, he goes on to make his first billion in a year. It's going to make your accomplishment seem insignificant in comparison. Which in the end is a great thing for us. Without them doing what they have I'm not sure we push as hard to get to where we are now, nor do we have the expectations that we do today, which is awesome. But here's some numbers to put it in perspective for you. UNI and Montana are two teams with impressive playoff history's of success and making deep runs. They get a lot of home games. But their playoff records are barely over .500. It's extremely hard to win in the playoffs. Let alone being sent on the road for every game except one.

The reality for us is the ONLY way we consistently make it deep in the playoffs is if we get a seed because of where we get sent. NDSU isn't on the run they are on if they don't get to stay home throughout the playoffs. There's no debating that. Their only playoff loss is when they had to go to Eastern Washington. SDSU actually has more playoff wins in true road games than NDSU has. We also have just as good of a home winning percentage. Undefeated. Doesn't make our playoff success even in the same stratosphere, but it illustrates the point. We didn't get home playoff games because CAS was a dump and we couldn't bid enough to get home games. There isn't a team in the country that can go on deep runs by getting sent to Montana, NDSU, and Eastern Washington every year. None. Home games=playoff wins. When we got to have EIU at home with an NFL QB and we destroyed them. So I believe we have already done a large part of what was needed in building the DJD.

We need better athletes overall. The disadvantage that we were at before the DJD is incredible. I know of a person who was on the team that got their first recruiting postcard from SDSU that had a picture of CAS on it and threw it in the trash because they thought it was from a DIII school. Now with being able to have our coaches on a level playing field for recruiting, it should make a massive difference.

The last thing is I think we need to see the coaches start to be more proactive similar to Coach Otz to get fan involvement, especially from the students. I do think they are starting to do that though. That's just as important for getting home playoff games. If we don't have the fans then we can't bid what we need to to compete with other teams with large stadiums. The fans will come with winning, but fans can help with it as well by allowing us to have home playoff games.

Right now I'm in a wait and see position for the coaches and whether or not we are truly at a plateau or not. One or two years isn't a plateau. Losing to NDSU during their championship run isn't a plateau. If catching NDSU is the goal, and you use beating them and winning a national championship as the way to measure if we are catching them instead of it meaning we have caught them, then it's going to appear to be a plateau for a while because of how far behind we were when this whole thing started. Because that's the finish line. If your only measure of progress is crossing the finish line instead of landmarks along the way, you're never going to appear to be gaining ground until the finish. That's why deep playoff runs are difficult to measure. The last season of Sumner and Zenner was quite possibly the best SDSU football team we have ever seen. Even bison fans admit that team could have won the championship had it not gotten sent to Fargo. But they ended up losing in the final minutes up there. Does that mean that that season wasn't progress for us? Just because they had to play the national champions at their place? On a neutral field it's not unfair to say they have a great shot of winning that game.

In the end give me a couple years before I can truly say we have plateaued so we can see the true affect of the new stadium.

[goon]

Re: Taking the next step

This discussion has really been heavy on attendance, which is easy to debate. However, I am more concerned with how this program takes the next step in terms of going deep in the playoffs consistently. Doing that will obviously drive attendance numbers, and recruiting, and attitudes. But how do you get there in the first place? I don't think having larger attendance numbers will take us to the next step in terms of program success. We have gotten to the point of consistently making the playoffs. Just making them though. What needs to be done to go further? That's why I brought up coaching, because that will be a drastic change that could provide the push that this program needs. It almost feels like we're stuck in a rut and that the current regime has taken us as far as they can, with that rut being consistently making the playoffs, consistently bowing out in the first two rounds, and consistently losing to the bison.

If making the playoffs is being in a rut every year, about 100 other programs in the country would love to be stuck in that rut.

Seems like a lot of teams jump to that conclusion after a few years and think, we are good, but we need a new coach to take us the next step......often to see to programs or teams back slide for several years or not even be as good as they were when they made that change. maybe its just anecdotal but sure seems like that is more then a distinct possibility.