Crowd

[mitchellrabbit]

Re: Crowd

you forgot: USD 1,969 and NDSU 3,761..... however accurate these may be.

[RabbitObsessed]

Re: Crowd

Saturday night:

SDSU 3,556
Augie 2,717

[Just in the crowd]

Re: Crowd

We used to draw 5,000 when we were playing teams that the fans could identify with. We just have to get used to small crowds. No one, except the huge supporters will be frequent visitors to Frost. I have not hardly missed a game, but feel the students and the locals have lost interest. A January Saturday night and we draw 3,556. In the good old days of the NCC we would have had the Fire Marshall shutting the doors.

[UWMandSDSU]

Re: Crowd

Saturday night:

SDSU 3,556
Augie 2,717

I have been to an Augie game this year, they don't report attendence the same way SDSU does. SDSU reports people at the game, not sure how Augie does it but there is no way they count butts in the seat.

[RabbitObsessed]

Re: Crowd

We used to draw 5,000 when we were playing teams that the fans could identify with. We just have to get used to small crowds. No one, except the huge supporters will be frequent visitors to Frost. I have not hardly missed a game, but feel the students and the locals have lost interest. A January Saturday night and we draw 3,556. In the good old days of the NCC we would have had the Fire Marshall shutting the doors.

"We"?

You don't actually cheer for SDSU do you?

[JackJD]

Re: Crowd

We used to draw 5,000 when we were playing teams that the fans could identify with. We just have to get used to small crowds. No one, except the huge supporters will be frequent visitors to Frost. I have not hardly missed a game, but feel the students and the locals have lost interest. A January Saturday night and we draw 3,556. In the good old days of the NCC we would have had the Fire Marshall shutting the doors.

Just in the crowd is a Bison fan, not a Jackrabbit fan. He's had short-term bans from this message board in the past and then he disappears for a while. It appears he's decided to do some trolling again on this board.

Just in the crowd: keep it up and you'll be banned again. You're on a very short leash on this board.

[Just in the crowd]

Re: Crowd

Just in the crowd is a Bison fan, not a Jackrabbit fan. He's had short-term bans from this message board in the past and then he disappears for a while. It appears he's decided to do some trolling again on this board.

Just in the crowd: keep it up and you'll be banned again. You're on a very short leash on this board.

Since arriving at SDSU as a freshman the only Bison games I've ever been to are the ones played at Frost.

[propar80]

Re: Crowd

Since arriving at SDSU as a freshman the only Bison games I've ever been to are the ones played at Frost.

So then what's your beef with everything SDSU??

Nagy Hater???
Tried out for one of the sports as a walk-on and got rejected???
Can't let the old NCC go and long for the golden NCC days???
One of the football or basketball players slept with your High School sweetheart that you followed to SDSU???

Come on let's here it...you're one of those posters who likes to come on here and start s#$t, so let's get more than the two sentence garbage you like to spew.
And don't give me the, "I'm just come on here to speak the truth" crap. The Summit isn't even as close as bad a conference as you try and make it out. WTF do you want...the Big East?? Get over yourself.

Go Jacks!!

[AugieJackFan]

Re: Crowd

Pretty confident the decibel levels were higher at Augie though. It was loud in there Saturday night I was there. I was also at the Oakland game Thursday night. There was 3,200 at the Oakland game and 99% of the time you could hear a pin drop.

Saturday night:

SDSU 3,556
Augie 2,717

[jackmd]

Re: Crowd

Pretty confident the decibel levels were higher at Augie though. It was loud in there Saturday night I was there. I was also at the Oakland game Thursday night. There was 3,200 at the Oakland game and 99% of the time you could hear a pin drop.

Not really relevant. Glad the Augie fans were into the Winona St. game and I wish SDSU fans would be more vocal but the two aren't related to each other.

It also isn't true that the fire marshal would be locking the doors at frost for a Saturday night game back in the NCC days. Sure if it was Augie or USD that might be true. However, for almost all other games, including NDSU/UND there were plenty of good seats. That said, Frost was more hostile as a consequence of the bleacher seating right at the floor level.

It is going to have to start with the students and I'm not sure how to make that happen. Their seating section is just okay and unless some additional motivation is provided I don't think we'll see raucous crowds for awhile. Winning certainly breeds interest which gets more people that might be loud through the doors but the general atmosphere will dictate to the majority of those attending and right now lame is about the best adjective.

[SoDakJack]

Re: Crowd

The problem with looking back to the NCC days is that the NCC-apologists only remember the packed, loud games. I remember more than my fair share of brutally quiet and bored crowds in both basketball and football. I will take the chance to see players like Keith Benson, George Hill, and Kevi Luper over lame DII games.

[jackrabbit1979]

Re: Crowd

The problem with looking back to the NCC days is that the NCC-apologists only remember the packed, loud games. I remember more than my fair share of brutally quiet and bored crowds in both basketball and football. I will take the chance to see players like Keith Benson, George Hill, and Kevi Luper over lame DII games.

Thanks you - you are right on target.

[jackmd]

Re: Crowd

The problem with looking back to the NCC days is that the NCC-apologists only remember the packed, loud games. I remember more than my fair share of brutally quiet and bored crowds in both basketball and football. I will take the chance to see players like Keith Benson, George Hill, and Kevi Luper over lame DII games.

Amen. Now, how do we get some electricity in that building? Get both the men and women rolling and some if it will take care of itself. We are close and I'm not about to lose hope but I miss the days of the spontaneous "let's go rabbits" and "1,2,3,4 tell the people who were for" chants.

[SoDakJack]

Re: Crowd

Amen. Now, how do we get some electricity in that building? Get both the men and women rolling and some if it will take care of itself. We are close and I'm not about to lose hope but I miss the days of the spontaneous "let's go rabbits" and "1,2,3,4 tell the people who were for" chants.

I am a believer in the whole theory that people in this area a just a laid back group. I love to get up, yell, and generally make as much noise as I can. But, there are a larger group of people that just want to go to a basketball/football game and watch. I don't think that any fingers can be pointed at any one group (students, older alums) as to the issue. I see plenty of people on both sides yelling as loud as they can.

Part of the problem is that it seems to me that a majority of the vocalness is directed at the officials rather than towards our team. Maybe we need to teach folks to yell for our team instead of at the officials...

[filbert]

Re: Crowd

The problem with looking back to the NCC days is that the NCC-apologists only remember the packed, loud games. I remember more than my fair share of brutally quiet and bored crowds in both basketball and football. I will take the chance to see players like Keith Benson, George Hill, and Kevi Luper over lame DII games.

Here Comes The Science!

I went back through the stats starting with the year after SDSU went to the D-II national championship game and did some number crunching.
There are three eras: first, the Division II era; second the D-I independent/transition era, and third the Summit League era.

Years: -------------------------- 1984-2005 2005-2007 2007-2011
Number of years ----------------- 20 ------ 3 ------- 3
Average annual attendance ------- 54,215 -- 21,608 -- 30,579
Average home attendance per game- 3,690 --- 1,846 --- 2,318
Average # of wins per year ------ 20 ------ 8 ------- 12
Average attendance per win ------ 2,894 --- 2,746 --- 2,704
Average non-conference attendance 2,471 --- 1,846 --- 1,509
Average conference attendance --- 4,550 --- n/a ----- 2,873
Average Augie/USD attendance ---- 7,187 --- n/a ----- n/a
Average NDSU attendance (d-1 era) n/a ----- 4,151 --- 3,996
Average Oakland-ORU attendance -- n/a ----- n/a ----- 2,914

Discussion:
First, the Summit League era includes the partial 2010-11 year (4 home games remaining).

I think the average attendance-per-win line tells a big part of the story. This isn't actually that surprising, is it? More people come out to see a consistently winning team--in SDSU's case, each win the men's team gets is worth somewhere around 2,800 fans coming through the turnstiles each year. This is pretty consistent through the three eras, although the slight downward trend should be of some concern to the Athletic Department, I think.

Both non-conference and conference attendance has struggled. Some of that has been the loss of the very well-attended non-conference series SDSU had with Northern (crowds of 6-8,000 several times). SDSU needs to do a much better job in hyping attractive non-conference opponents coming into Frost (Northern Iowa and Nevada come to mind) and try to hit 3,000 or more at least once, and preferably more than once each non-conference season. SDSU should do everything in its power to establish long-term regional non-conference rivalries with Northern Colorado, North Dakota, Creighton, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Denver, Wyoming, and other regional schools that would have good name recognition with SDSU fans in order to boost non-conference attendance.

It is apparent that a huge chunk of the D-II attendance came from the two games each year against Augie and USD--14,300+ on average every year out of an average home attendance of 54,000 a year in the D-II era. But even if you take that 14,000 a year out, you still had 40,000 a year going to Jackrabbit men's basketball games in the D-II era, and 30,000 in the Summit League era. (Again, I think you come back to attendance-per-win here.)

The Athletic Department, I think, also needs to do a much better job in hyping the Oakland and Oral Roberts games. These have been the two top teams in the league for a long time, and the average attendance for those two schools is almost identical to the average conference attendance. Gotta do a better job there, guys, IMHO. Even if those games fall during a student break, they especially need to be marketed to students as must-see events. Most of the intensity in college basketball comes from the students. With a sparse student section, you're not going to have a lot of energy in the building.

If Sell and the promotions guys can get a couple of high-profile, highly-promoted non-conference games, get out and promote the dickens out of Oakland and Oral Roberts (especially to students), and continue to build the NDSU rivalry as we re-engage USD, and especially as the men's team becomes more consistently competitive on its home floor, then I think attendance, and intensity within Frost Arena, will start to recover.