Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

(07-16-2014 09:43 AM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

Yes.

Last season, three of our four homes conference games had crowds over 21,000. That never happened when we were in the Sun Belt.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season, with all of the Texas conference games being on the road. I suspect our games against LA Tech, and Southern Miss will still attract larger crowd. If we are having another strong season, I believe our attendance spike will continue.

(07-16-2014 10:01 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 09:43 AM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

Yes.

Last season, three of our four homes conference games had crowds over 21,000. That never happened when we were in the Sun Belt.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season, with all of the Texas conference games being on the road. I suspect our games against LA Tech, and Southern Miss will still attract larger crowd. If we are having another strong season, I believe our attendance spike will continue.

You guys probably stood to benefit the most from the move. You went from being a loner in Texas to having 3 other programs in your state that will draw more interest from casual football fans.

Tech's took a hit because we were so bad. UNT brought a nice crowd to Ruston. Tulane did not (but it was on a Thursday) Virtually no one was at the Tulsa game. Southern Miss game was below average.

(07-16-2014 10:05 AM)Niner National Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:01 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 09:43 AM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

Yes.

Last season, three of our four homes conference games had crowds over 21,000. That never happened when we were in the Sun Belt.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season, with all of the Texas conference games being on the road. I suspect our games against LA Tech, and Southern Miss will still attract larger crowd. If we are having another strong season, I believe our attendance spike will continue.

You guys probably stood to benefit the most from the move. You went from being a loner in Texas to having 3 other programs in your state that will draw more interest from casual football fans.

I agree. All of our fans know and look forward to competing against Rice and UTEP. UTEP has a large alumni base in the Dallas area. UTSA was a surprise, but I believe we have an opportunity to develop a very intense rivalry with them too. Also, LA Tech isn't far. I really like the lineup in the western division.

The move is also improving our recruiting.

(07-16-2014 10:13 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:05 AM)Niner National Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:01 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 09:43 AM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

Yes.

Last season, three of our four homes conference games had crowds over 21,000. That never happened when we were in the Sun Belt.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season, with all of the Texas conference games being on the road. I suspect our games against LA Tech, and Southern Miss will still attract larger crowd. If we are having another strong season, I believe our attendance spike will continue.

You guys probably stood to benefit the most from the move. You went from being a loner in Texas to having 3 other programs in your state that will draw more interest from casual football fans.

I agree. All of our fans know and look forward to competing against Rice and UTEP. UTEP has a large alumni base in the Dallas area. UTSA was a surprise, but I believe we have an opportunity to develop a very intense rivalry with them too. Also, LA Tech isn't far. I really like the lineup in the western division.

The move is also improving our recruiting.

There are a lot of Tech alums in Dallas who will attend games at UNT. I remember one year we had as many fans at an SMU game as SMU did (about 5,000).

(07-16-2014 10:16 AM)T_Won1 Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:13 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:05 AM)Niner National Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 10:01 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  

(07-16-2014 09:43 AM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  Did any of you see a bump in your home average attendance with the move to CUSA? Was there any conference game in CUSA that definitely outdrew your old conference match ups?

Yes.

Last season, three of our four homes conference games had crowds over 21,000. That never happened when we were in the Sun Belt.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season, with all of the Texas conference games being on the road. I suspect our games against LA Tech, and Southern Miss will still attract larger crowd. If we are having another strong season, I believe our attendance spike will continue.

You guys probably stood to benefit the most from the move. You went from being a loner in Texas to having 3 other programs in your state that will draw more interest from casual football fans.

I agree. All of our fans know and look forward to competing against Rice and UTEP. UTEP has a large alumni base in the Dallas area. UTSA was a surprise, but I believe we have an opportunity to develop a very intense rivalry with them too. Also, LA Tech isn't far. I really like the lineup in the western division.

The move is also improving our recruiting.

There are a lot of Tech alums in Dallas who will attend games at UNT. I remember one year we had as many fans at an SMU game as SMU did (about 5,000).

SMU doesn't draw respectable crowds for football. They've been doing much better with basketball. If North Texas can continue to win and dominate our series with SMU, it would be great for C-USA.

I look forward to LA Tech coming to Apogee. With a 7p.m. kickoff, the weather should be nice. I hope you guys can send some fans for our Thursday night game.

Last season was not our best home slate we have had in our FBS time even with ECU and Marshall coming in. That said, our attendance was 18,714 per game - dampened by early-season losses to BYU, ECU, and UNT all in a row. Memphis and WKU have been our consistently biggest draws lately and this year we had just under 24,000 for the Memphis game, not a bad number for that game.

18,714 in 2013 was a 5.5% increase from 17,738 in 2012, where we had a rather bad season and our marquee game was against ULM (21,067 after their great start to the year). So I'd say it was sort of a wash, but the season was an improvement and I am hoping that this one will be even more so. We have WKU, UAB, USM, BYU, FAU, and Savannah State at home so WKU and BYU will be very large crowds (hopefully approaching 30k at least for BYU) that will help our average.

Last year we stayed consistent with another sellout, the fifth in a row for our five years of football. The interesting thing is that we are still a couple of hundred shy of a sellout this year. It is pretty well expected for those remaining seats to also be sold, but to my knowledge, this is the latest ODU has gone before being sold out. It could be a number of factors causing this, including some who will miss our traditional CAA rivalry schools, and possibly some who anticipate it being a hard season. Hard to say.

Marshall and Tulane were the only "older" CUSA opponents we played at home this past season. The Marshall game was the second most attended game in the stadium. Tulane has to be top 5 or top 7.


So I would say, yes we did see a bump in attendance, but only when playing CUSA teams. We once again were shafted by a home game on black Friday, which killed attendance. We played Middle at noon in September, killed attendance. Finally we played New Mexico State, which had similar attendance to SBC games over the past years. The only SBC game that would have solid attendance would be either FIU or WKU.

I think North Texas has the potential to continue increasing attendance for all the reasons previously mentioned. Couldn't imagine what it is like for you guys to finally be in a conference with other Texas schools.

Also cool to hear it has helped recruiting. Would you say it has helped a lot or just enough to say it has helped?

(07-16-2014 01:44 PM)FAUAEPi Wrote:  Marshall and Tulane were the only "older" CUSA opponents we played at home this past season. The Marshall game was the second most attended game in the stadium. Tulane has to be top 5 or top 7.


So I would say, yes we did see a bump in attendance, but only when playing CUSA teams. We once again were shafted by a home game on black Friday, which killed attendance. We played Middle at noon in September, killed attendance. Finally we played New Mexico State, which had similar attendance to SBC games over the past years. The only SBC game that would have solid attendance would be either FIU or WKU.

I was not aware that we were the 2nd most attended game in the stadium. I heard we took a big crowd to that game, we have alumni in the area and lots of players from the local area. Definitely glad we have you guys at home this year lol.

I think that we as a conference need to do all we can to increase attendance. Everyone should average over 20k/game imo. Also think Marshall, UTSA, & UTEP need to keep winning and increasing our attendance to consistently over 30k/game. I know UTEP gets huge crowds when they're winning. We need those in this conference.

All FAU has to do is start winning and people will come out. A lot of people.

Games against the little sisters of the poor aren't going to sell tix. I'm glad UTSA has decided to stack non-conference play with P5 schools. That's where we will get our attendance bump.

(07-18-2014 05:22 PM)SApuro Wrote:  Games against the little sisters of the poor aren't going to sell tix. I'm glad UTSA has decided to stack non-conference play with P5 schools. That's where we will get our attendance bump.

That will work well for attendance only if UTSA is not pasted at home by the P5 schools. A steady diet of losing big against those programs, year after year, will run fans away.

(07-18-2014 05:52 PM)Green Menace Wrote:  

(07-18-2014 05:22 PM)SApuro Wrote:  Games against the little sisters of the poor aren't going to sell tix. I'm glad UTSA has decided to stack non-conference play with P5 schools. That's where we will get our attendance bump.

That will work well for attendance only if UTSA is not pasted at home by the P5 schools. A steady diet of losing big against those programs, year after year, will run fans away.

Agree. Maybe not right away but sooner rather than later the Runners have to steal one.