(07-24-2015 08:37 AM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  Play less FCS teams and more G5 teams and have those games on Saturdays.

Sell beer somewhere in the stadium...but not everywhere.

No November MACtion games get put on ESPN3.com. If we are going to sacrifice a game to the middle of the week for ESPN then they had better put us on real TV for the exposure.

If you pick the right FCS team for the game you'll do fine. The Bulls drew 23K for Stony Brook because of the SUNY thing. I think we will do well against smAlbany this year in terms of attendance.

Beer in the stadium is nice. I know UB is adding 500 or so club seats this year with "enhanced beverage service" and there are plans to convert 1400 on the East grandstand once funding is in place.

(07-24-2015 08:12 PM)prairiedawg Wrote:  Warm weather....and less wind. DeKalb has to be the windiest location in college football add that with freezing temps or rain and you will get an empty stadium.

MAC schools need to come up with some way to 'weather proof' their stadiums.

Maybe build a large number of loge seats which can be surrounded by plexiglass.

Or put up plexiglass at the ends of the stands to block wind.

play in summer

(07-24-2015 10:25 PM)emu steve Wrote:  

(07-24-2015 08:12 PM)prairiedawg Wrote:  Warm weather....and less wind. DeKalb has to be the windiest location in college football add that with freezing temps or rain and you will get an empty stadium.

MAC B1G schools need to come up with some way to 'weather proof' their stadiums.

Maybe build a large number of loge seats which can be surrounded by plexiglass.

Or put up plexiglass at the ends of the stands to block wind.

there are other schools in our geography that manage to draw big crowds in the same weather conditions.

(07-24-2015 10:02 AM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  

(07-24-2015 09:31 AM)emu steve Wrote:  I've kind of thought post-game concerts would be neat.

Maybe not Taylor Swift, but a 'big name' performer 30 minutes after the game ends.

After half time, special tickets would be needed to enter the stadium. They could be priced differently than regular game tickets.

That might work for the students but I am done after a game...especially with my 3 little ones.

But you're already going to the game; the idea is to get people that need an extra incentive beyond just the game.

Some excellent ideas:
1. Honor season ticket holders of visiting teams - they'll buy food, etc. adds to bottom line and helps put butts in seats. Ball State has offered one free away game ticket with each season ticket purchased and we always go to that game.
2. Having painting of logos and schedules on bardns and buildings by students.

If I were Mac commissioner....

Schools that are not keeping up with the 15K minimum regularly would be gone. Make it part of your bylaws that any conference affiliated schools have to keep the 15K minimum attendance to remain a member. For those that don't, let them go and bring in schools that have invested in athletics and has a vision to improve year after year. North Dakota State, JMU, Delaware and a few others would be nice improvements that have good upside and is committed to having a good program.

(07-25-2015 11:03 AM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  If I were Mac commissioner....

Schools that are not keeping up with the 15K minimum regularly would be gone. Make it part of your bylaws that any conference affiliated schools have to keep the 15K minimum attendance to remain a member. For those that don't, let them go and bring in schools that have invested in athletics and has a vision to improve year after year. North Dakota State, JMU, Delaware and a few others would be nice improvements that have good upside and is committed to having a good program.

A commissioner cannot just kick out whomever he/she wants, especially when its the member schools who are employing that person.

Also, focusing solely on football attendance ignores a huge spectrum of criteria that go into who is or isn't in a conference, including on field performance, basketball, media market, institutional fit, interscholastic relationships, ect.

(07-25-2015 09:42 AM)david75bsu Wrote:  Some excellent ideas:
1. Honor season ticket holders of visiting teams - they'll buy food, etc. adds to bottom line and helps put butts in seats. Ball State has offered one free away game ticket with each season ticket purchased and we always go to that game.
2. Having painting of logos and schedules on bardns and buildings by students.

1. I would not honor automatically season tickets from other schools. What I would do is have the schools work out a compact where they will provide tickets to other teams season ticket holders for 5-10$. Then when you sell tickets you offer a road warrior package for 20-40$

(07-25-2015 01:30 AM)perimeterpost Wrote:  

(07-24-2015 10:25 PM)emu steve Wrote:  

(07-24-2015 08:12 PM)prairiedawg Wrote:  Warm weather....and less wind. DeKalb has to be the windiest location in college football add that with freezing temps or rain and you will get an empty stadium.

MAC B1G schools need to come up with some way to 'weather proof' their stadiums.

Maybe build a large number of loge seats which can be surrounded by plexiglass.

Or put up plexiglass at the ends of the stands to block wind.

there are other schools in our geography that manage to draw big crowds in the same weather conditions.

Actually B1G attendance starts to fall off unless the school is UofM, OSU, WI, etc. and the opponent is one of those (other) schools...

There was at least one UofM game last year where the actual crowd was believed to be less than 70K (but announced around 100K).

(07-25-2015 12:15 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 11:03 AM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  If I were Mac commissioner....

Schools that are not keeping up with the 15K minimum regularly would be gone. ...

A commissioner cannot just kick out whomever he/she wants, especially when its the member schools who are employing that person.

Exactly ... the commissioner works for the conference, which IS the schools. Even assuming that the commissioner was willing to pursue a policy which would essentially eliminate one MAC school after another until the conference had too few members to retain its FBS conference status ... which would be a quite idiotic policy to pursue ... the Conference is not a corporation and the Commissioner is not the CEO or President.

A Conference is a club, and the members of the club are not going to sit still for the person they hired as club manager starting to act as if he had the power to kick members out. It will always take a super-majority vote of the Presidents of the Conference to kick a member out, and at the FBS level, it will always be very unusual circumstances for that to happen.

I could see a special heavily discounted ticket for season ticket holders of other MAC schools ... that would help take advantage of the easy travel between schools in the MAC. There's no way to know which school is going to be doing well in any given season, but it makes sense to set things up so that whichever school is generating excitement can help boost the attendance of the schools it visits makes a lot of sense to me.

(07-25-2015 12:15 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 11:03 AM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  If I were Mac commissioner....

Schools that are not keeping up with the 15K minimum regularly would be gone. Make it part of your bylaws that any conference affiliated schools have to keep the 15K minimum attendance to remain a member. For those that don't, let them go and bring in schools that have invested in athletics and has a vision to improve year after year. North Dakota State, JMU, Delaware and a few others would be nice improvements that have good upside and is committed to having a good program.

A commissioner cannot just kick out whomever he/she wants, especially when its the member schools who are employing that person.

Also, focusing solely on football attendance ignores a huge spectrum of criteria that go into who is or isn't in a conference, including on field performance, basketball, media market, institutional fit, interscholastic relationships, ect.

A commissioner would have the power to kick out a school if the bylaws of that conference stated that member schools had to uphold a level of attendance and competitiveness. Dont believe me? Ask Temple.

Wake Forest's football team has a career winning percentage of .407, worst in the P5 and 114 out of 120 in FBS. The ACC's avg attendance is 50K, Wake's is just 27K. Why doesn't the ACC kick out Wake Forest?

(07-25-2015 03:39 PM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 12:15 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 11:03 AM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  If I were Mac commissioner....

Schools that are not keeping up with the 15K minimum regularly would be gone. Make it part of your bylaws that any conference affiliated schools have to keep the 15K minimum attendance to remain a member. For those that don't, let them go and bring in schools that have invested in athletics and has a vision to improve year after year. North Dakota State, JMU, Delaware and a few others would be nice improvements that have good upside and is committed to having a good program.

A commissioner cannot just kick out whomever he/she wants, especially when its the member schools who are employing that person.

Also, focusing solely on football attendance ignores a huge spectrum of criteria that go into who is or isn't in a conference, including on field performance, basketball, media market, institutional fit, interscholastic relationships, ect.

A commissioner would have the power to kick out a school if the bylaws of that conference stated that member schools had to uphold a level of attendance and competitiveness. Dont believe me? Ask Temple.

Temple was never a full member of the Big East, and therefore was not entitled to the rights of full membership. Plus, the conference presidents voted to end the relationship, not the commissioner.

The only time schools are ever forcibly removed from a conference is when they have a major and prolonged violation of the rules and even then, the only two examples that are coming to my mind are when Marshall got kicked out of the MAC in 1969 for NCAA violations and when Chicago State got pressured out of the Mid-Continent in 2006 due to major institutional controversies.

Nothing can be done. Get out when you have a chance.

(07-25-2015 04:05 PM)perimeterpost Wrote:  Wake Forest's football team has a career winning percentage of .407, worst in the P5 and 114 out of 120 in FBS. The ACC's avg attendance is 50K, Wake's is just 27K. Why doesn't the ACC kick out Wake Forest?

The stadium only seats 31,000. That close to full. Maybe the one day will kick out wake forest and invite EMU.

(07-25-2015 03:39 PM)MUHERD76 Wrote:  A commissioner would have the power to kick out a school if the bylaws of that conference stated that member schools had to uphold a level of attendance and competitiveness. Dont believe me? Ask Temple.

Its still a vote of the Presidents deciding whether or not to kick the school out. A Commissioner could recommend it, but schools would not be silly enough to give that kind of power to their hired help.

(07-25-2015 06:35 PM)Big_Man Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 04:05 PM)perimeterpost Wrote:  Wake Forest's football team has a career winning percentage of .407, worst in the P5 and 114 out of 120 in FBS. The ACC's avg attendance is 50K, Wake's is just 27K. Why doesn't the ACC kick out Wake Forest?

The stadium only seats 31,000. That close to full. Maybe the one day will kick out wake forest and invite EMU.

or maybe EMU will build a smaller stadium because now you're changing it and saying percent to capacity is more important than actual totals.

(07-25-2015 08:15 PM)perimeterpost Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 06:35 PM)Big_Man Wrote:  

(07-25-2015 04:05 PM)perimeterpost Wrote:  Wake Forest's football team has a career winning percentage of .407, worst in the P5 and 114 out of 120 in FBS. The ACC's avg attendance is 50K, Wake's is just 27K. Why doesn't the ACC kick out Wake Forest?

The stadium only seats 31,000. That close to full. Maybe the one day will kick out wake forest and invite EMU.

or maybe EMU will build a smaller stadium because now you're changing it and saying percent to capacity is more important than actual totals.

Can you still call it a stadium if the capacity is 15? I'd be worried that the fire marshal would close it down, but we all know EMU would get 20 people in the stands.

Quote:Can you still call it a stadium if the capacity is 15? I'd be worried that the fire marshal would close it down, but we all know EMU would get 20 people in the stands.

EMU can fit 30k -- and more if one goes to sell over-capacity (WMU officially holds the same amt but has gotten about 36k 3 times).

But if you're talking giving it a "packed" feel, yeah, EMU would have to make the stadium hold about 15k, if you counted Pepsi cans as people. Around 8k if you only counted humans, to give it a decently filled stadium.