Its a total chicken and the egg situation. When I was in school, going to hockey games was appointment Friday and Saturday night. Guys who never watched hockey, girls who didn’t know the rules, didn’t matter, people would line up to get into the Goggin starting after class Friday and sit there for hours just to get in. Going to hockey was cool. It was part of the Miami experience.
Football was never that. I assume it still is a joke on campus. People wouldn’t know if we even had a game and laugh about the concept of going to it.
It’s really hard to change that. You almost need a generational special team to do it. I think the AD has tried nothing and is all out of ideas, but its a really hard problem to create a tradition/culture from scratch.
I was a freshman during Covid 2020 season when there were no fans and I remember telling some people that I was excited for them to open the stadium up so I could attend games and they laughed at the idea. Most people couldn’t tell you how Miami football is doing (until we win something and then they bandwagon post it on socials even though they probably didn’t watch). Only hardcore football fans and those that actually care about Miami athletics could tell you anything about the team, and even then a solid percentage of the hardcore college football fans at Miami don’t care because they have other teams from their home state they root for
I think a big part of the hockey thing was obviously we had a national power, but we were also playing Ohio State, Michigan, ND, etc. No one gives a shit about MAC schools. The early 2000’s were a great opportunity for us and Brad Bates with his absolute mismanagement of the AD and Shane Montgomery destroying a solid football program are to blame.
I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but the Goggin was rockin’ for WMU and BGSU (and NMU and Ferris and Alaska Anchorage, etc.), too! Winning consistently was obviously a big part of that, but the energy and camaraderie of the crowd was itself a draw. It was a virtuous cycle, whereas football has a death spiral. No crowd energy, no traditions, no marquee wins.
To have any chance at all at student interest now in football, and still a long shot, there needs to be success early and sustained in the year against school(s) the casual and oft disinterested fan, can recognize. What Miami student is going to say “hey let’s go to Yager and watch Miami who has already lost to Wisconsin and Rutgers go play Lindenwood”. Maybe we should start the year against OU. I don’t know the teams but I do know we need to do what I am suggesting.
It has to be bigger than the football. I’m going on a lark here but just indulge me. Ok here goes: Remember the run GameStop had about a year ago? Where this obscure 90’s stock went to insane heights in a three month period. Well…People didn’t chase GameStop stock when they were leveraging themselves like crazy to buy it because they loved GameStop’s business fundamentals. They saw it as a to the moon or bust cult. I follow these amazing Reddits where the participants brag not just about winning big on investments but also losing everything. (FYI, I’m nothing like this as an investor and take my 4-6% return and am grateful. Anyhow, we don’t need a better product or better teams in town or better conference for people to show up although for some that does help. We need to build a product people irrationally want to be a part of. I went to many Cubs games in the 90’s. They stunk and there were always fans. It was a party.
Ps, I used to grinch about cardinal directional schools because I saw it rationally. But now I realize if the experience is good that stuff might not matter.
I just have to ask you all if you’re tired of having the same discussion over attendance year after year? I don’t have the energy to go deep on it after expending a lot in my 5 years on campus. Everyone knows what needs to be done but until the administration and the athletic department really take the time and energy to take a hard look at it, nothing will change.
But I’ll try to add a little something. I agree with OldRedskin on engaging surrounding communities. We’re doing the fundraising road show in the big Midwest metros which we should keep doing. We need to do an attendance road show just in the triangle that is Indy, Cincy, and Columbus, which would include Dayton. We need to visit every Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, Elks Club, Economic Club, etc. in that triangle and make a pitch because a fair number of these communities are blue-collar that don’t identify with white-collar, J.Crew U. In fact, Miami is probably resented by a fair number of people in this triangle. Coach is great about linking a Miami education with football and getting players ready for life. The players’ own background stories are great. Humanize the product. Go to Connersville, Greenville, Grove City, Franklin, Winchester and everywhere in between. Is it guaranteed to work, no. But it needs to be tried.
It’s not about winning or losing though I admit winning helps. It’s about building a culture that students want to participate in … and it’s bigger than just football. Akron has zero issues filling the student section for basketball. Toledo has a large student contingent for every women’s home basketball game. For crying out loud, stupid ass BUGS has students showing up for volleyball games (this is not intended to be a dig towards women’s volleyball, pun intended). Western has arguably had the best student section in college hockey for over a decade, long preceding their natty last year. The common thread here is those schools have created an environment that students want to participate in whether or not the team wins or loses. And it wasn’t done organically.
Want student butts in seats? Get the brass off their asses and out of their offices. Get them engaging with students one-on-one. Marketing campaigns are fine, but there’s a limit to what they can do in isolation. There is no substitution for the president, AD, and coaches directly pressing the flesh with their customers.
Pretty simple fix. Ask the sororities what will get them to wear sundresses and go to the games. If you get that figured out, the guys will follow in large numbers. As I noted, alcohol, party atmosphere, and hot girls will fill Yeager. Free t-shirts, and a MAC schedule will not.
100% it’s the culture. Students don’t come to Miami planning to go to games (other than maybe hockey) at other schools it’s part of the sell. Miami should include athletics more in their pitch to high schoolers and you might get more students who want to engage with athletics
Attendance issues aren’t unique to Miami even if they’re not as acute at other MAC schools, but I do think we are in one of the more challenging situations in all FBS when taken together. Some thoughts on the causes here that some have already hit at, from broad to Miami-specific:
Increased media and entertainment options as a society
Degraded in-person CFB experience from increased TV timeouts
High competition from nearby P4 and NFL teams for football interest
Decreased efficacy of G5 football thanks to CFP format and NIL/transfer portal
Declining demographics across the Rust Belt
Awful stretch of football from Montgomery through the early Martin years
Consistently poor OOC performance
Mediocre stadium/tailgating experience
Very geographically scattered alumni base
Inconsistent to nonexistent marketing, including lack of a pricing strategy
Lousy game operations, including unique food and drink options
Lack of any significant student culture around Miami football
Low engagement from surrounding communities
Admin that can be apathetic or hostile to athletics or party culture
Lack of special events around football besides Family Weekend
We can’t do too much with the top five on the list. We can with the rest besides what’s happened in the past, our solutions need to be oriented around each holistically or else nothing will change.
What happened to our Appaloosa horse tradition of riding out on the field with the team before a game? That was a cool tradition. FSU does this. Why did ours go away? We are Miami and named after a tribe. Maybe bring some cool cultural appreciation factors back and better!
Agree - Lindenwood for a home opener is not exciting. If you have to have an FCS team, grab Columbia or Dartmouth, etc.
My preference is to get rid of the FCS games completely and try to get some 2:1 games with P4 OOC games like OU/Toledo and others have had. Even others in the P6 from other conferences get some of these P4 games at home.
mz343 has it correct. No one in administration cares what we have to say and we are wasting our time. Miami has made a concerted decision that improving attendance at athletic games isn’t a priority and is not one worth investing significant resources. Any “development of culture” has to come from the top. Miami brass have decided they aren’t interested in culture developing for athletics.
Take this with a large grain of salt from me, We used to get a lot of football alumni at our club football games back in the day(2012,2015) I was always told that some of them never felt welcomed by Sayler, he wanted to create his own success. Everytime I went to a game though like alot of you saw the tailgating atmosphere felt stale and empty even when i went to school there football games it just seemed like “another event on campus” the culture has to change and it starts with at the top of the athletic department. I agree the athletic dept. needs a brand revamp to drum up excitement theres just no way that yager should be as empty as its always been.
Perhaps Miami could reach out to the 21 organizations that are part of the Greater Cincinnati Youth Football League. It’s a K-6 league of youth teams from Mason, Lebanon, Middletown, Edgewood, Hamilton, Northwest, Sycamore, etc. that play most of their games on Sundays from mid-August to mid-October. Arrange a Youth Football Day for one of the Miami home games (Holy Cross-2026?) and offer free or sponsored tickets to the local teams.
Agree 100%. Make the pregame more fun, and also get rid of the rap music which booms at a high volume and , if you want to play music, play music from the 60’s to the 80’s , since most of the attendees at the games are over 50. Also, it’s hard to devote time to a game that lasts over 4 hours, due to all the tv time outs.