article about declining football attendance

[Bo Darville]

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2...taying_ho.html

[WeWillScrewItUp]

I just assume sitting under my tent drinking and grilling while watching it on my tv over going into the stadium.

[Esmerelda Villalobos]

Im a gamer. I love going to the games. I love tailgaiting and drinking all day and then watching 4 hours of football. That said, out of the 30 people that tailgate with us, Id say maybe 10 or 12 actual go in. 3 or 4 of those leave at half time, no matter what, to go back tailgaiting. I give away a minimum of 2 tickets to each game. Sometimes it is hard to even get rid of those...and they are club level.

People just like to sit and drink and socialize. They can hear the game. A lot of it boils down to drinking and food. They need to start serving alcohol at football. Baseball is a no brainer. Having a beer and watching baseball is as american as it gets. Hell, Ole Miss HAS a baseball program only because 10 years ago, they let students come in for free with coolers (Tailgaiting football style) and get wasted and turned their atmosphere and program around.

I always bring my own booze into the game any way and have never really had a problem with it. Nobody in our section really is drinking but us but they dont care. We do have a "sit down pentecostal" type family that is 2 rows up but they have generally learned to deal with us. A 100 yard stare from a 65 year old man in khakis aint gonna do much to me. He learned that after about 4 years in a row.

Edit - Our football atmosphere has gone to the crapper the past 3 years. In 2009 it was special. It has gotten progressively worse every year. I have my theories on why.

[Ronny]

...I'll fill you in on a big secret:

If you keep ****ing over SEC fanbases by constantly having games start @ 11am in the morning, there is going to be a decline in attendance. It really takes an Albert Einstein to figure that one out, doesn't it?

Also, Thursday nights games are contributing to your decline in attendance.

I know the executives @ ESPN & the chairmans of the board in the SEC office might find this hard to believe, but if you miss Friday work because you attended a Thurs. night football game, at many American workplaces, that's grounds for dismissal.

[gravedigger]

Heck, I'll buy the two you dont use instead of you giving them away.

[FlabLoser]

We've best this to death, but we need (and have gotten) new powers in charge of stadium audio/video. And we need less commercials and more music.

I would also like to see situation-appropriate movie clips. I've been to NHL games that did this. Sponsored by Blockbuster with their logo in the corner, they'd play something like Braveheart pumping up his men, some guy complaining (bad call), or some locker room speech or slow clap scene. Etc etc etc

[Hump4Hoops]

I just assume sitting under my tent drinking and grilling while watching it on my tv over going into the stadium.

This eggcorn bothers me immensely. It's "just as soon," not "just assume."

[War Machine Dawg]

Pretty simple, really. At all but a few SEC schools, the average fan has been priced out of attending games. When it's $80 bucks per ticket per game + $3.50/gal gas + food + (maybe) parking pass + (maybe) hotel......you can see how not many can afford that. Especially when you have to shell out money to a booster program on top off all that. Throw in a declining economy, and it's really pretty unsurprising attendance is declining at some places. It's the average fan that is passionate about the school, probably went there, and WANTS to be at the games. But they can't afford it anymore due to skyrocketing prices. Only businesses can afford seats at the ridiculous pricing levels some schools are asking now. It's the price of big business college football, and it isn't changing, but it still sucks.

[Political Hack]

the game atmosphere was great in 09 and 10.' then... new blood took over the game day and we went commercial.

LT-esq "we're in the black" mentality will kill morale. When our administrators start caring as much about winning as the fans, they'll realize what they can accomplish. Unfortunately, they're small minded and think selling another $2,000 add on the big screen is more valuable than having an ESPN announcer say that Oregon and Miss State were the two best venues he'd been to all year.

[codeDawg]

the game atmosphere was great in 09 and 10.' then... new blood took over the game day and we went commercial.

LT-esq "we're in the black" mentality will kill morale. When our administrators start caring as much about winning as the fans, they'll realize what they can accomplish. Unfortunately, they're small minded and think selling another $2,000 add on the big screen is more valuable than having an ESPN announcer say that Oregon and Miss State were the two best venues he'd been to all year.

I don't mind making money, but it is possible to do it without jacking up a stadium followed by a comma inducing visit Mississippi commercial.

[AlSwearengen]

For me, last season, games were something that I endured. Between driving three hours to and from Starkville to watching Wilson's idea of a defense to the unbearable misery of watching crappy commercials on the jumbotron, it was too much for me. I have actually missed more games over the last two years than I did during the late jackie and early croom years when we couldn't win more than three a year. During the late croom years, I was boycotting until he and l.t. were gone, so I don't really count them.

Some of the problem might be that during my boycott, I discovered other things to do on a saturday that are much cheaper and less time consuming. So, if I'm not getting at least a decent return on my investment for a game, I'm not going. I guess i've become a bad fan.

[The Croom Diaries]

I think it's like WMD said, it's expensive and some might say inconvenient. You can watch the game in the stadium or you can watch it in HD with cold beer close by and you can pause the game when you have to piss instead of standing in line and missing some action.

If you have kids, it's way easier to just stay at home and watch it. If you're coming in from 2+ hours its really expensive. I live in GA so if I want to go to a game I'm looking at a $500 minimum. No way I can afford to go to 6-7 games. When I figure that I could stay home and watch it on TV and buy a computer with that kind of money instead it's hard to justify sometimes. Especially when we lose. One year I spent a couple thousand going to games and we lost every one of them and it made it no fun...but I'm pretty cheap.

[32 Dive]

I'm putting away thousands per year, towards my two preteens education through MPACT (hopefully at Mississippi State). This casino employee has nothing left after that. While I'd love to have season tickets, that education investment is more important. I want THEM to be able to afford their families' season tickets, when the time comes. Meanwhile, I still watch our games on TV, in Standard Definition.

[Dawgface]

All the above. Too expensive, takes a full day, easy to watch on TV, too many 11am games, traffic headaches and for me......slowing down as I age. Having said all that, I will go to a couple of games per year. Love getting back on campus, but won't be going to every game. A full day of it just wears me out.

[BogeyGolfer]

I used to go to every game as well but with wife and kids it's a lot easier to fire up the grill, eat and drink all we want while watching our game and the other games played throughout the day in HD on a large screen. This has been our system the last couple of years, and we usually rotate between our friends houses. It's a lot cheaper than shelling out money on tailgating necessities and hauling all of it to campus and arriving on campus five hours before the game etc... There is no way in hell I would travel to campus and put my self through that misery to watch us play someone like South Alabama or Alcorn St. I do try to make at least a couple of the big games on campus each year. Honestly, the NFL is facing similar issues because the TV product is excellent with replays, different on the field camera angles etc...It's just too easy to stay at home. I know this probably makes me a bad fan but I really don't care.

[WPDawg]

Echo what most have replied. Being three hrs away, its too time consuming and expensive. I may just be getting old. I do love the atmosphere of being on campus and at a game. I could care less about all the big screen, music theatrics and think most people could care less for having an "NBA" experience while watching a football game in Starkville. They want more people to attend? Keep the pricing down and provide a pure college football atmosphere on a Saturday afternoon. Give the fluff to the skybox crowd if they have the money to spend.

[Political Hack]

the hotel expense kills a lot of attendance. $500 for a weekend is too high when the ticket is only $70.

[Coach34]

the hotel expense kills a lot of attendance. $500 for a weekend is too high when the ticket is only $70.

yep- the mandatory 2 nights is bullshit.

[Pollodawg]

When you drop $1,000 on a hotel room, then another $150 in gas, then another $100-$150 feeding everybody....Not to mention the tickets, you're a good $1,500 in when the dust settles. With the economy the way it is, people either can't or won't drop that kind of coin on one weekend. Can you blame them?

[War Machine Dawg]

When you drop $1,000 on a hotel room, then another $150 in gas, then another $100-$150 feeding everybody....Not to mention the tickets, you're a good $1,500 in when the dust settles. With the economy the way it is, people either can't or won't drop that kind of coin on one weekend. Can you blame them?

No doubt, Pollo. But let's be completely honest: Even in a very good economy, that's a hell of a lot of dough to shell out for 1 weekend. The article the OP linked mentioned the AD's knowing that ticket prices are an "elephant in the room." I don't expect games to be $20 bucks anymore, but $40+ is ridiculous. $75 for the Egg Bowl is absolutely outrageous - and I don't care that the Black Bears started that (after Memphis did it to them). I can't imagine being a fan of somewhere like UGA or Bama where tix are $60+ for even the shitty games.

I still buy my tickets and go, because I can drive down and back the same day. If I had a wife and kids, I likely couldn't. And I do miss seeing all the other good games being played that day. Sometimes it's damn tempting to just sit at home instead of make the drive to Starkville. I go because I love State. But it won't be long before I'm priced out of it. To me, it's a really sad state when people who love their school and love football can't go because outrageous prices keep them from it. That's also a big reason game day atmosphere suffers - businesses give tickets to clients and such who aren't invested in the school. They could care less if a shitty commercial plays during a media break, because it doesn't affect their overall gameday experience.

None of this will change - the big business college football train left the station a long time ago. It's way too far down the tracks to reverse the course. But the overall product is reaching a breaking point in terms of fan involvement because of it. It's a shitty situation that doesn't have a clear or easy answer.