Is there friction between Brick and FB? We need more people in Yager. Thousands are roaming Uptown every game day. Why not Brick sponsored tailgates with beat the clock specials for students who downloaded tickets? Something has to be done. My son is a freshman and says his friends don’t have interest in our games but love watching college football.
2 Likes
Brick Street/Will has historically been a supporter of Miami athletics. Not sure if there is a specific fraction between the bar and football. The players spend a lot of time there and seem pretty well taken care of, if nothing else.
Maybe they should figure out how they can shuttle kids to games, and back after.
It’s not Will’s job to get students to care about a shitty product. As Alex said, he’s been a visible booster for years. He’s not going to close down his bar on Saturday afternoons.
Basketball proved last year that all you need to do to get students to care is win. What has football ever done to make students excited about the product on the field? They start every year 1-3 and then play a bunch of weeknight games against schools even sports fans don’t care about.
7 Likes
Yager will be empty the last 3 home games of the year. So sad!
Noticed even Kent out drew us yesterday.
1 Like
Student apathy has been part of Miami since I was there in the early 80’s and I’ve gone to games ever since (ignoring the inaugural season at Yager since it’s an outlier). There have been times when that isn’t the case is 1) WINNING, by far and away, puts butts in seats. 2) Day and weather - nice days and 1:00 Saturday kick offs. 3) opponent - UC, OU, Marshall, but see #2 for a qualifier
Not suggesting the bars should go dark. But we have to get creative if we are going to move to next level of G6. I love MAC but it’s dying. 18k should be a baseline. And Fact is: we have to play at least 2 or 3 P4 games each year for the 3-4million in revenue it brings in. You might (and should) win those occasionally. But a slow start in record is almost guaranteed. Next year we have Nebraska and Purdue. W. Kentucky will be interesting like UNLV and UCONN. Year after I know we are at Indiana and they are working on another.
I know people often like to complain about alum/local attendance but student attendance is a much bigger issue. That’s around 20k people in the city of Oxford who can attend the game for free. We get what, maybe 1k to show up to a game? They need to figure out a way to make it more enticing for students like it is at so many schools, even other MAC schools
The solution is easy: you win. And not against Akron, BG, and CMU. You have to be nationally relevant and win for about 3 years. You need to win over at least 3 years of students to change the culture. Ben came close but it quickly faded when they couldn’t follow up on his success.
For 20+ years, the culture of Miami students is “you don’t go to football games”. You can’t fix that with some marketing stunt or free food or some gimmick. They’ve tried so many stupid promotions over the decades (Guinness world record for most whoopy cushions anyone?). Why does Miami have a worse football culture than some of our MAC peers? Probably could write a sociology dissertation on it, but the fact is that our culture is very much football games are not a thing you do.
If basketball can follow up what they did last year with a couple more years of success, it’ll become a “thing to do” and part of the Miami experience. People didn’t line up for hours outside Goggin for hours pre-game in the 2005-2010 timeframe because anyone knew anything about hockey. They did it because the team won games and it became part of the student experience at Miami.
You need winning, real winning, to start that boulder. Its the only solution.
2 Likes
While I agree with almost everything you said, I think it’s a little more complicated than just simply winning. I was a student in 2023 and after we beat UC the student crowd was bad against Delaware state (and almost empty after half), and then playing Toledo on national tv with 2 1 loss teams the student attendance still wasn’t great. I certainly can’t say I know the solution and I agree winning helps to a degree. But I think the student attendance problem is even bigger than just on field product