(11-05-2015 10:53 PM)nsavandal09 Wrote: (11-03-2015 08:16 PM)LUSportsFan Wrote: (11-02-2015 09:50 PM)dtd_vandal Wrote: (10-31-2015 10:07 PM)Usajags Wrote: I have been in Missoula, MT for the last few days and have been watching football on local TV all day. What purpose/advantage does Idaho have for being in FBS? Why would you not want to play Montana, Montana St, NDSU, Portland St or any other of the local teams in this region??? There are FCS games all over the TV, all day. Currently watching you guys play NMSU. If you played these local teams you are playing in front of kids that might actually attend your university, I don't see many kids from the southeast wanting to go to school in Idaho.
I really think there is more advantage to you guys dropping down to FCS then forcing the FBS issue. Of course that all changes if the MWC were to come calling.
I really would like to hear y'all's take on this.
What purpose would Idaho have dropping down to a dieing classification where the very pinnacle of achievement is playing a "championship" game in a half empty soccer stadium in the middle of nowhere Texas?
We moved all our other sports to the Big Sky and saw no increase in attendance. We played Eastern Washington a few years ago in football and it was the second least attended home game of the year. Moving back to the Big Sky will do next to nothing attendance/excitement wise except maybe a somewhat bigger crowd for Montana every other year (or less seeing as how there would be 14 teams in the league and everyone wants to play Montana).
I think there are good reasons to remain FBS, but I'm not sure poor attendance at the FCS Championship game is one of them...at least in recent history.
Just to set the record straight. The soccer stadium is in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (25 miles north of downtown Dallas). The game has been a sellout or near sellout since at least 2011.
The soccer stadium holds 20,500.
2010 14,328
2011 13,027
2012 - 20,586
2013 - 21,411
2014 - 19,802
2015 - 20,918
Here is the Humanitarian Bowl attendance. A cold weather bowl game near the holidays featuring no-name opponents from out of town.
2009 26,726 Idaho vs Bowling Green
2010 25,449 Fresno vs NIU
2011 20,876 Ohio vs USU
2012 29,243 USU vs Toledo
2013 21,951 Buffalo vs SDSU
2014 18,223 AFA vs WMU
So this randomly selected, objectively undesirable bowl game outdrew the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP game 5 out of the last 6 years, sometimes by 5 figures. The FCS title game was irrelevant when it was a novelty, a college football playoff. Now that the FBS does it to it is even more pointless.
The Humanitarian Bowl was not
"...a randomly selected, objectively undesireable bowl game". The 2009 Humanitarian Bowl was specifically mentioned by
NSAVandal09 on 11/1/2015 at 8:23 pm early on in this thread I was just using the Humanitarian Bowl as a common point of comparison as a test against the validity of some of the statements in this thread as posited in that statement. I actually had no issue with that statement.
"...you can compare the 2009 Humanitarian Bowl's tv ratings and attendance and see how much better it was than the actual FCS National Title game..."
I have never said that the FCS championship game outdrew anything. That wasn't the test. Toyota Stadium, with a capacity of 20,500, would rarely if ever meet that test. However, with the exception of the first game there, the stadium has been pretty much capacity limited since the game moved to that venue. That gets to the other statement which I did have an issue with after checking on its validity. (I guess it's from 35+ years as a financial and systems analyst bleeding through.)
The other statement dealt with a
"...half empty soccer stadium in the middle of nowhere..." That is the statement I was testing.
Hopefully, we can agree that a venue in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex is not in the middle of nowhere. Frisco is partly in Collin County and partly in Denton County. Collin County has a 2014 population estimate of 885,241. Denton County has a 2014 population estimate of 753,363. The Metroplex MSA is at 6.95 million. That's a population greater than thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia.
FCS Championship Game
2010 Finley Stadium - Chattanooga, TN 20,668 vs 14,328 - 69.3% - statement valid except not in the middle of nowhere and not in a stadium whose primary use is soccer.
2011 - Toyota Stadium - Frisco, TX 20,500 vs 13,027 - 63.5% - valid statement except for middle of nowhere
2012 Toyota Stadium - Frisco, TX - 20,500 vs 20,538 - overflow - 100%+ capacity - statement 100% fail
2013 Toyota Stadium - Frisco, TX - 20,500 vs 21,411 - overflow 104.4% - statement 100% fail
2014 Toyota Stadium - Frisco, TX - 20,500 vs 19,802 - 96.6% - statement fail - not half full
2015 Toyota Stadium - Frisco, TX - 20,500 vs 20,918 - overflow 102% - statement 100% fail
If I wanted to cherry-pick, as I am being accused, I would have picked the following FCS championship games.
1995 - 32,106 attendance 30,000 capacity
1992 - 31,304 attendance 28,000 capacity
1996 - 30,052 attendance 30,000 capacity
1993 - 29,218 attendance 28,000 capacity
1994 - 27,674 attendance 30,000 capacity
1989 - 25,725 attendance (at an 18,000 seat capacity with 14,000 permanent seats - Paulson Stadium) I would have loved to have been in a crowd like that! I've been at several games with 90,000-100,000+ in attendance, but each time the stadium listed capacity was close to that.