App State has sold out its football season ticket packages for the third straight year in its 30,000 seat stadium. Boone is in the middle of nowhere with few hotel rooms. Miami is less than an hour from anywhere within two large metro areas.
What’s our excuse again?
I mean people can go watch Cincinnati or OSU, or the other 5 or so other FBS football programs in Ohio. The bad part about not being middle of nowhere I guess. Lot of competition.
Most of the people going to App State games live near Wake Forest, Duke, UNC and NC State. That OSU UC thing isn’t much of an excuse IMO.
App State has a pretty good record of sustained success.
That is part of the reason.
I would imagine as well that most of their alumni care more about App State than the other schools in state. That is not the case with Miami any more. There are a lot of Miami alums who care more about OSU football or UC or X basketball who live in the area than they do about their own school. Sad but true.
True, but until last year it had been over a decade since we had a nine-win season. From 06-18 we had 5 ten-loss seasons against 1 winning season. I would hazard to guess that every other MAC program would suffer a similar erosion in their fan base if they went through a similar period, and look bad compared to App State. Also App State is in a state with P5 schools that are all basketball-focused athletic programs, we have OSU.
App State doesn’t have half their season played on weeknights in empty stadiums
Ohio has almost 2 million more ppl than NC but only 1 P5 FB sch vs 4 P5 in NC. App St & ECU draw better than any MAC sch. I’d say NC just cares more about FB than OH.
@FlySouth Excellent point! And NC also has Charlotte as another G5 team plus several FCS programs -Elon, Western Carolina, Davidson, NC Central, NC A&T and multiple D2 teams, including several HBCU programs.
The point about the mid-week November games is probably a salient one. That probably does inhibit the sale if season tickets at Miami. Maybe our season ticket package ought to be just for the home Saturday games.
I will never understand why so many Miami folks view OSU as their primary football focus and Miami as their secondary one.
I disagree with this and I think the opposite is actually true. One could argue, albeit at a lower division until recently, that App State has more of a football tradition than the rest of those NC Power 5 schools combined. A NC Power 5 school hasn’t won the ACC since 2006 and before that, it was Spurrier’s 1989 Duke team. UNC has had great players, but even Mack Brown hasn’t won an ACC championship in his 2 stints at UNC.
What also helps App St. is their ability to play those Power 5 schools at home and their Sun Belt rivalries carried over from their FCS days so there’s great familiarity. And as someone said, playing on Saturdays and being in an area where there’s more to do than just football (a lot of recreational amenities) is likely attractive as well.
Yet three of the four P5 schools in NC draw near capacity crowds in Winston, Raleigh, and Chapel. Even Duke is starting to draw better in Durham as they’ve become more competitive.
ECU’s fan base is legendary - a fanatic pirate cult.
I concede the two or three home games in November are negatives for buying season tickets except for people who live in Oxford or in nearby Hamilton.
But I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have 24k butts in the seats at Yager for our three or four Saturday games.
What part do you disagree with? I’m not saying the P5 NC programs are individually better than OSU but a state with 2M fewer ppl does feed 4 P5 schs (all pretty good) and more importantly fans support all (Inc G5) programs pretty well.
Please stop comparing any North Carolina football program with Ohio State. That is a joke. Actually, even UC has consistently been far stronger than any of the North Carolina programs. While OSU is a top 4 or 5 program in the country and UC was a top 25 program most of the time for almost 20 years, basicallly until last year. Basically, the only people who would rather be in Oxford watching us play than in Columbus watching OSU play are the posters on this board. You actually mentioned Duke football and Wake football and compared them to OSU. App State has probably been a better football program than those other 4 over the last couple of decades.
Also it ignores how lousy our program was for the most part for more than a decade. During an era when MAC and college football attendance has generally dropped you can’t pile on a bunch of bad seasons during Montgomery, Treadwell, and early Martin without expecting some unfortunate dropoff.
Some small, isolated towns are deeply passionate about their sports teams. Bozeman, Missoula, and Fargo, all in the FCS, immediately come to mind. Oxford, however, does not. To be fair, Oxford is a smaller town compared to these three, though it is slightly larger than Boone. It’s unrealistic to expect a large turnout from Cincinnati commuters, especially on a Tuesday night in November.
At this point it is what it is … until we have another Cinderella season.
I never even slightly insinuated that any of the NC programs were better than OSU. I just stated G5 schools within the P4 NC market are supported by their alumni much better than Miami alumni support Miami. I also said the P4 schools in NC have solid support even if they haven’t been a top 5 team.
If you’re a Miami alum who didn’t also attend OSU, why the Hell are the Buckeyes - who had a one-P5 program monopoly on Ohio football since forever - such a big damn deal?
I’m a Miami alum who didn’t also attend OSU. I could care less about their program. If I’m in Ohio on a gsme day, I’ll be in Oxford, not Columbus.
Want to draw a consistent crowd? Just win, baby. Every year. Double-digit wins, a conference championship, and a bowl game every year for a few years will do the trick just fine.
NESCACDAD - I’m also a Miami alum who didn’t attend OSU. I never game a damn either…Until both kids attended and graduated OSU. So I understand your thought process.
I still love Miami Football, but OSU football is a huge deal!
Note: One can root for and support more than team.
Edit was small. So forget it.
I am another Ohio native and Miami alum that has never had any particular interest in OSU. As a Midwesterner, I did mildly root for the B10 in bowl games, particularly the Rose Bowl (which I have attended partly because I once lived in California in my 20’s).
I have been to Ohio stadium a number of times with some of my OSU grad buddies, mostly to watch Miami play. Much of their fanbase reminds me of that of a hardcore NFL fan, (obnoxious and usually drunk). This of course is partly because a great chunk of their fans did not even attend OSU.
At the same time, I can also can understand how Eddie and others here feel about it if their kids went to OSU. Fortunately for me, neither of my sons went there so it’s very easy for me to remain a “non fan” of the Buckeyes.
I get that, particularly if your kids went there. I’m also a Washington fan because I went to grad school there. Whenever Miami plays the Huskies, I’m a RedHawks fan. Undergraduate loyalty takes precedence.
I will continue to be pissed off at local alumni and fans (60 mile radius from Oxford) who won’t make a point of filling a rather modest Yager Stadium three or four times in September and October. Tickets prices are mostly a non factor. To me, there is no excuse. Our teams have been respectable and even better over the past five or six years.
Agree… Laziness with local alumni and students. I am disabled and NOT local but see a game yearly.
