(03-18-2011 02:22 PM)Jag89 Wrote: Building facilities is one of those times that tempered expectations are very important. Personally, I don't know if you guys will even need 40k seats for a couple of games off the bat. Mississippi State is the only school I see on the schedule in future years which might need 40k seats and personally I'm skeptical you'll need it even then. I'm pretty sure the Cajuns are the only school that has had more than 30k at a true home game and I think they've only done that a few times.
I can think of several games coming up that may need more than 30k... Miss. State, N.C.State, Oklahoma St., Kent State, Navy (Penscola Naval Air Station hour away), Southern Miss, Tulane and Troy are around 2 hours away. We are currently getting 25k against teams like Ga. State that hardly brought any fans.
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You're looking at things through rose colored glasses(or perhaps red, white and blue colored glasses) If you draw more than 30k for half the games you listed, I will be
beyond shocked. Yes, you're drawing lots of fans right now against inferior competition with poorly traveling fanbases, but you're also currently undefeated as a program and there is still a lot of novelty around the program in general. You're also giving too much credit to some of the schools you listed, Kent State is not breaking more than 500 fans to Mobile, Oklahoma State and NC State might bring 1,000. Tulane? Unless they're playing a team that's a real draw, they average less than 20k(and you would have to assume that compared to other schools, they get a lot of visiting fans who just want to travel to New Orleans) I seriously doubt Tulane brings many fans to Mobile. As time goes on and you start losing and the newness wears off, you will take a hit on attendance and come back to the pack, granted with USA's long football starved fanbase and attractive OOC scheduling, I expect the USA to be near or at the top of attendance year in and year out, so long as you're winning at a decent clip, but you are not going to see crowds well over 30k as frequently as you are predicting. I could see you coming close to or hitting 30k for Miss State, Navy and Southern Miss, but Miss State is the only one I think you would come close to selling out if you sat 40k, that's why 30k-32k is a good number. What's worse? Once every two or three years when a Miss State comes to town, you have 2k-4k disappointed fans who can't get in? Or three to four times a year your stadium is less than half full? Because make no mistake about it, unless you guys are winning 10 games a year, a few years down the road you'll be averaging less than 20k a game for conference games. Outside of Troy, who are USA fans and the general Mobile public going to be excited to come out and see on a year to year basis? Outside of Troy, who's going to bring more than a few hundred fans on a year to year basis? I think building around 32k is a prudent decision and then
if you're selling out multiple times a season(and turning away more than a few hundred people at those sellouts) and you're averaging closer to 25k than to 15k for your "less than desirable" games and you can repeat that for a few years in a row, then you talk about expanding to somewhere between 40k-45k.
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South Alabama adds Georgia to 2014 schedule
