What's it gonna take?

[Username]

Re: What's it gonna take?

I agree with Dan. I was in charge of getting butts in seats for 2 years and both those years UNI was good. It was like pulling teeth to get that place full or close to full because 1- 60% students are ISU or Iowa fans and leave every weekend to go to one of those campuses or home. we cant get around that that is how it has been for years. 2- holiday vacations make it tough to even get any students in there. 3- the cedar valley suppourts but there is really room for improvment getting the community involved. once again there are iowa and isu fans that wont come to UNI games or come to 1 or 2 a year. I think to fill the seats you need to reach out to local youth sports teams and school groups. If you can get groups of people in seats and they have fun they will go home and tell mom and dad or friends and family that it was a lot of fun and they want to go back. That is from my experience

I know most of us including myself grew up hawks or cyclones so it would be different if we were a terrible program, but we have a winning record vs both in the past 10/15 years.

[SteinPizza]

Re: What's it gonna take?

It is crazy but man were those good times! Plus I don't know if you would find a better group of guys to represent UNI. The Macs Maniacs were a start off to what they have now with the pep crew. Good times. I can still remember Hartzel taking our Pierce signs at the dome for the iowa game, man was he upset! And yes we won that game

Just curious, but what did the Pierce signs say? Unless they had big, block letter F bombs, or some super overt rape reference, he should've let it go. There's nothing wrong with good ole' obnoxious student section behavior, as long as it doesn't go so far as to offend 90% of the audience. If it offends a few, it means you're on the right track.

[dan_beeding]

Re: What's it gonna take?

These are the ones I remember

Pierre, I know what you did last summer
Stay away from my sister

I'm sure Scott could chime in with a couple more.

[Purrrrrfect]

Re: What's it gonna take?

With Ryan gone at wisky now, we may be able to snatch a few of those that we seemingly always compete with them for but lose on. (Assuming wisky falls off for a few years to rebuild and hires a like Ryan coach (defense first) to replace him).

[Panther100]

Re: What's it gonna take?

If you'd been paying attention to all of his posts since he started posting this type of thing happens a lot with him.

Only knows the basics, though is proficient at regurgitating, what the stat book/quick google results shows. Most of what he gets wrong isn't trivial information. It's stuff that someone who follows UNI as closely as he has claimed in the past would know - remember claims to live in New York, watch every single game, and fly back to Iowa to see multiple games in person yearly.

Claw, it isn't my problem you don't understand college/university accounting. Go talk to the university controller. He/She will tell you the same thing I posted.

[Kyle]

Re: What's it gonna take?

The obvious and only answer is win. Win early, win often, and win big.

But for the sake of discussion, here's my list (in order of importance):

1) Keep coach Jake around for another 10 years
2) Increase average attendance to 6,000+
3) Win NCAA Tournament games multiple years in a row
4) Iowa and ISU programs go through a long tourney drought

[SteinPizza]

Re: What's it gonna take?

The obvious and only answer is win. Win early, win often, and win big.

But for the sake of discussion, here's my list (in order of importance):

1) Keep coach Jake around for another 10 years
2) Increase average attendance to 6,000+
3) Win NCAA Tournament games multiple years in a row
4) Iowa and ISU programs go through a long tourney drought

In order, #s 3 and 2 are far more important than the others. #1 would help 2 and 3, not denying that. UNI has no control over #4, and the other programs are in a pretty decent spot as we post today.

[Kyle]

Re: What's it gonna take?

I disagree. If someone told me I had to pick only one of those four, it would be #1 without a second thought.

[CincyPanther88]

Re: What's it gonna take?

It's a bit of a conundrum how to fill up the arena. It's not unlike what a lot of pro and college teams go through. They can't fill their place up on a regular basis because ticket prices are too high. However discounted tickets costs the organization(s) money. That's money that can be used to pay coaches what they are worth amongst other things. Winning - even on a consistent basis - doesn't solve that problem.

I've been on this board for several years now and while I haven't had the opportunity to experience this first hand, there are many excuses why people don't fill up the arena/Dome. Now these excuses aren't necessarily from the members of this board but rather what they have heard and reported here.

The weather
Church night
Bad time of day/night for a game
TV
School night
Prices are too high
Bad marketing
A loss in the last game
Iowa's playing
Too far to travel (Which somewhat relates to the 1st issue)
High school games
Etc.

Now some of these issues are unique to UNI. However most are not and other schools deal with the same issues we do. Wichita has many churches there and AFAIK they still hold services when the Shockers play. They have high school games there as well and get the same TV shows as they do in the Cedar Valley. I'm sure tickets aren't cheap and while they don't have Iowa to compete against, they have Kansas which is a more formidable foe. While Wichita is much bigger than CF/Waterloo, they have a bigger arena to fill up. I always chuckle to myself when I see some of these weeknight attendance figures for our road games. I figure it must not have been church night in Bloomington or some other city.

[06panther10]

What's it gonna take?

Empty seats is not a problem unique to UNI either, especially in CBB. When you really consider all of the factors, UNI does relatively well with regard to attendance.

Has anybody ever watched a Oklahoma home game? Okie State? A pac 12 game? Empty seats galore. And these are for big money, sometimes top 25 ranked teams. Many of them only fill there arenas for a couple big games a year, just as UNI does.

[UNIhoops]

Re: What's it gonna take?

I think the key to future attendance is packing the student section. I know everyone understands that, but that is who the future season ticket holders and fans will become. I don't think we have a very good chance getting non-uni graduates to become panther fans. If you attend games while you're in school you will probably attend when you become an adult. We have thousands of students right on campus. I think the university needs to start pushing the incoming freshmen to come to ball games. Imagine if every year 400 seniors graduated and were die hard panther fans. It wouldn't take long to get a bigger fan base. Have the RA's, class presidents, frat leaders, and any kind of club meet and find out why they don't come. I came to my first game because my RA had a meeting and said the entire floor was going to a game. Other floors did the same and had some kind of contest. My group of friends attended games for the next four years.

[PantherFan]

Re: What's it gonna take?

I think the key to future attendance is packing the student section. I know everyone understands that, but that is who the future season ticket holders and fans will become. I don't think we have a very good chance getting non-uni graduates to become panther fans. If you attend games while you're in school you will probably attend when you become an adult. We have thousands of students right on campus. I think the university needs to start pushing the incoming freshmen to come to ball games. Imagine if every year 400 seniors graduated and were die hard panther fans. It wouldn't take long to get a bigger fan base. Have the RA's, class presidents, frat leaders, and any kind of club meet and find out why they don't come. I came to my first game because my RA had a meeting and said the entire floor was going to a game. Other floors did the same and had some kind of contest. My group of friends attended games for the next four years.

My daughter is a freshman at UNI and a big Panther fan (I raised her correctly). Earlier this year I asked her if she was going to the basketball game. Did the same once concerning volleyball. She wasn't aware of the game. I know she follows UNI athletics on Twitter so she really didn't have an excuse from that perspective, but how much does the athletic department market to the students? You would think they would plaster the campus when there are games, do promotions, group outings to the games, etc. She says that type of stuff rarely happens.

This is related to football attendance, but one of the reasons the students may be leaving at halftime is because the dining halls close at 6:30 or so on Saturdays. I know she left one game early because I was unable to take her out for dinner following the game and she wanted to eat.

[Kyle]

Re: What's it gonna take?

Empty seats is not a problem unique to UNI either, especially in CBB. When you really consider all of the factors, UNI does relatively well with regard to attendance.

Has anybody ever watched a Oklahoma home game? Okie State? A pac 12 game? Empty seats galore. And these are for big money, sometimes top 25 ranked teams. Many of them only fill there arenas for a couple big games a year, just as UNI does.

And it's trending up.



*2007-2008 last year of Rick Harzel pricing
**2011-2012 last year of the Iowa/ISU series

[domedays]

Re: What's it gonna take?

The graph is tickets sold, I would assume? Finishing an unprecedented amount of success in the last decade and we have gone up 80 people.

[06panther10]

http://i.turner.ncaa.com/sites/default/files/images/2015/07/07/2014-15_mbb_attendance.pdf

Browse through some of these attendance figures from last year. Lot of good info for comparisons sake.

UNI's 5,100 attendance from last year puts us right near the top 100 nationally (out of what, 350 D1 teams?), and puts us ahead of schools such as Wash St, TCU, Stanford, Tulsa, Miami, Boston College, Colorado State, etc.

For a mid-major in Cedar Falls, IA, we do OK. Room for improvement? hell yes. But I think this attendance argument often lakes perspective.