Another D1 thread

[LUconn]

I looked around and didn't see a recent thread on going D1 so I had to make a new one regarding what I just noticed.

A huge problem for us in this endevor is attendance. I believe we have to average 15k or something like that? maybe it's 50k, I can't remember. But anyway, since that is regulated by the NCAA to get into D1, but the acutal attendance taking process is not, it seems to me as though attendance embellashing is common. Look at any unsuccessful program and you'll see that they obviously do this. The question is, with our pesky values, are we above that? I've always thought the number in the vines may be a little fishy but we do have everybody go though those counters. Here's a picture to illustrate what got me thinking about this. This makes my argument for me:


Edit: Apparently they took the picture away. Imagine Duke vs WF and 2 people in the stands in the background.

[LUconn]

If you look through all of the pictures www.accfootballphotos.com/2005/acc51029dukewfu/acc051029390.html you'll see that there are maybe a couple of pockets of crowds (all wearing WF colors) there can't be more than 5 or 6 thousand.

BUT web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/Internet/attendance/WKLYATTENDANCEIA.HTML

Sched Dt Home Opponent Attendance
29-OCT-05 Duke Wake Forest 15347

yeah right. were they counting anything that moves in the stadium?

[Sly Fox]

You are confusing paid attendance with actual attendance. For a short time, the NCAA was requiring actual people in the stadium to be used for measuring attendance against the 15k average threshhold. But this past year they loosened that up somewhat from what I understand.

If you go be paid attendance, you can manipulate numbers considerably without breaching any NCAA protocol.

For us to go I-A (not Division I as Chris' editor insists it be called in 'his' paper) we would have to expand Williams Stadium to seat a minimum of 30k. That would be the biggest physical impediment to overcome.

Attendance will most certainly be a challenge. In all likelihood, we will be playing I-AA schools for home non-conference games (and we've seen how poor of a draw those schools are in Lynchburg) with our big-name I-A non-conference opponents nearly always on the road. That's why it is imperative that we gain admission to a I-A conference prior to us making the leap in order for us to have any home dates against I-A schools. Right now, we would be scheduling primarily Sunbelt & MAC opponents for home games and then collect paydays on the road.

The advantages of going I-A aren't as strong today as they were just a couple of years ago. But I still think it is a terrific goal to aim for. The costs of competing at I-A will be significantly higher .... but the potential return on that investment could be incredible.

[LUconn]

I thought it was the opposite and that they started counting turnstyles this year. Maybe I'm backwards. If that's the case, we should have football tickets come in a package with everything we sell. You want that window decal in the book store? Buy these tickets for the same price! They come with a window decal. So it's a sweatshirt you want? Buy these slightly more expensive tickets! They come with a free sweatshirt!

[Sly Fox]

Basically, every student has bought a season ticket with their student fees.

[PAmedic]

so there's 9K right off the bat then, only 6 to go every game. And yeah- ever watch those WAC games at 0-dark-thirty in the AM? Driving snowstorm with 500 people in the stands!

[Mark]

I'm pretty sure the 30k stadium requirement was dropped several years ago. I know that Ball St., Idaho, Florida International and Troy all play in much smaller stadiums (only Ball St. is over 20,000).

As far as the paid vs actual attendence....it was always paid attendence, then a couple of years ago they switched to actual attendence to try to stem the tide of 1-AA teams moving up to 1-A. Once the change was implimented, a large number of schools (mostly from the MAC and Sun Belt) protested the change because they said it was unfair to them if bad weather kept people who bought tickets from actually attending (I'm sure that these were some of the worst teams in 1-A had nothing to do with the attendence problems). The NCAA quickly went back to counting tickets sold, or it may just be tickets distributed. I'm not sure if they can count giveaways or not.

[PAmedic]

That's pretty interesting: as I re-read my earlier post, its NOT that far off. I'm NOT ADVOCATING THIS, but all LU would have to do would be include 5 or 6 "season tickets" for all home FB games in each orientation packet at the beginning of the year- bury the "cost" in the fees for the semester and you automatically have 9000 paid admissions. WOW.

That goes to the whole "will LU do what it takes (even the shady stuff) to make it in D1A?" I would hope not, but ya never know. The almighty $$$ screws up otherwise sound judgment sometimes.

[LUconn]

hey, if it's tickets sold, there's nothing shady about it. That's just how it works. And if it's tickets given away?! Holy crap, I'll volunteer to give tickets out. Let's see, there's a couple thousand that work here I think, that'd put us up to 11k, 4 to go. We already give them out to local hotels I think. We can give them to local schools, LC because they don't have a football team. It'd be a snap to give away tickets like that.

[PAmedic]

Esp with a church that will seat 6400 on campus. Lets see, 9K students + 6K church goers= [orange]15k D1A mandated attendance numbers[/orange].

We got it knocked LUconn- time for lunch.

[grm]

If students received passes to athletic events, I think it would be fair to include a reasonable fee, but what happens when the team is successful, and there is a "big" game, and you already have capacity spoken for in the "student passes"? It would be similar to overbooking a flight.

[PAmedic]

I think we can safely cross that bridge when we come to it- say, 2025.

[PittLU]

I love it!!!! Seriously though, look at Temple. How in the heck do they sustain a team. The Link cant have but more than 3,000 per game. How in the world do they get the "ticket revenue" for 15k? It has to be much more complicated than we are making it out to be or LU would have made the jump years ago. You know more schools would have "buried the fee" in admissions if they could do that and get away with it. As far as the "overbooking the flight", the students would show for the big games. A winner always brings attendance. If Duke was in first place in their division of the ACC, I guarantee you wouldnt see empty seats.

[PAmedic]

re: the seating- we have plenty of seats in the grass to put about 3000 extra students. Incl standing at the top, I bet you could squeeze 15K in there as it is now. And I'm betting SLY or CHRIS could tell us how legitimate/"legal" our brainstorm is.