Game Notes are up:
Charlie Strong will be the color commentator.
I am pretty much your vintage so if you want to add 15 more years…
Hockey was always packed at Old Goggin. I literally never remember it empty in the 90’s.
Basketball absolutely drew more fans. At least 4K for many games. Big ones maybe more. I went to as many as I could. It was the Golden Age of hoops and the sweet 16 run hadn’t even happened yet.
Football was perpetually half empty. Do you recall differently?
Of course, this thread is about the last 25 years so I think my observation still holds. Miami students aren’t fundamentally apathetic. At times, it’s our product that has been.
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Had we beaten UC im convinced there would have been a field storming given how many people stayed — but that’s all speculation now
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I have no doubt either. Like zero doubt.
Bingo, I think everyone here loved the MAC and all its rivalries, but if you are on this board that alone means you care a hell of a lot more than the general public. It’s unfortunate, but this extends beyond Miami & the majority of people at MAC schools don’t care about the MAC as a conference. Evidence — my IG feed is full of people who I just graduated with back in May posting from OSU games with OH-IO captions.
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I think your assessment is spot on here. Students who enroll at Miami generally don’t have collegiate athletics on the top of their wish list in their college criteria. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t college sports fans (my group of friends certainly were but their fandom was already firmly established with their childhood team, OSU, which was no surprise given their Columbus roots).
Conversely, I had close friends from high school who grew up as diehard OSU fans, attended UC, and quickly converted to diehard Bearcat fans (and I’d go as far to say that they now despise OSU). Not exactly apples to apples here, but it’s clear that those two schools simply do a better job of establishing that student to university identity. You’ll hear two UC alums say “it’s nice to meet another Bearcat,” or two OSU alums say “it’s nice to meet another Buckeye.” I’ve never heard two Miami alums say “it’s nice to meet another RedHawk.” And yes, there’s the whole name change ordeal that I won’t dive into or anything, but I think the general sentiment is still there. Miami’s “school identity” is not generally rooted in athletics. I have heard “it’s nice to meet another Miami grad,” but nothing about that statement is rooted in athletics.
PS - not to age myself or any of my fellow HawkTalkers, but this is coming from a perspective of someone who’s graduated within the past 5 years, so I’m sure viewpoints are different and unique amongst different generations of alum.
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Is it? Why is that, when the last 25 years of student/fan interest and “winning” (which by the way no one has really defined here) is fundamentally no different than the previous 25 years of student/fan interest and “winning” as seen in attendance numbers and various subjective/qualitative metrics? Arbitrarily limiting it to the “last 25 years” makes you sound like an old man bitching about Millennials and Gen Z-ers. This is a long-term institutional issue as mz343 and Cincy04 have alluded to.
I was replying to a thread in front of me that mentioned the last 25 years. That’s the context I posted my reply under.
Ps, you can call me an old man if you like, but I would prefer dirty old man if you care to make a nuance.
My thought on Miami
Basketball attendance is much lower now than 20 years ago
Football attendance is slightly lower now than 20 years ago
Student attendance is certainly variable but we did have more than half the student body show up for UC - that is amazing number and we had an amazing student attendance for basketball against UC 3 years ago
That is why I hate that we will never play UC again at home. Right or wrong Miami students dont view any MAC school in that way
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OK, at the risk of Bash calling me old (which I don’t particularly care for if you wanna know), I will add a few general comments with a perspective from the 70’s onward.
First, with regards to basketball, going back a few decades we had a MUCH better schedule, partly due to having UC, XU, and Dayton on the schedule every year, but also because we had an excellent program worthy of playing (and competing with) good programs. So, yeah, we had a better base if attendance but even then much of the student body was pretty apathetic.
In football, through most of our history up through Big Ben era, we were a highly respected program. And yes, we had great attendance for the big games, but even back in Little Miami Field (capacity 14,900) days, we had many a small crowd.
At the same time, up through the Big Ben era (and after we opened Yager in 1983) we usually drew nice crowds for Homecoming and Parents weekend. A crowd of around 20,000 once or twice a year when we were decent was fairly normal.
As we moved into the modern era of expanded ESPN coverage, culminating (if I can even use that word) into weeknight, attendance killing games, our actual “butts in seats” attendance has turned into a cariacature of itself with official announcements of 13,000 when less than half of that number are on hand. But it’s a different world now with our dependence for our survival on money games and TV revenues. So yeah, modern students seem less interested than ever in Miami sports, but our alumni fan base/season ticket holders have been stunted by our unattractive home schedule and weeknight games which are not feasible to attend for many.
So, a complicated situation. I would conclude with winning certainly does improve interest and attendance, and always will. It also sure helps to play UC and other OOC opponents at home, but maybe that “ship has sailed”.
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The onus shouldn’t be on the consumers to prop an operation up, or elevate something.
Until Miami itself decides sports, or elevating its revenue sports, are a priority, it’s silly to blame students, alums and locals for looking elsewhere for their major college athletics fix.
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Beat Ohio!
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and that was after 10 straight years (1994-2003) of never having a losing season. The overall record during that streak was 77-36-2, which I would think most reasonable people would define as “winning”. Tack on two more winning seasons (2004 and 2005) and the streak is 12 years with an overall record of 92-45-2. Again, “winning”, but despite all that “winning” attendance took a nosedive after Roethlisberger left, all of which seems to suggest that peak student/fan interest is more or less driven by the presence of one outstanding nationally recognized student/athlete.
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I’m catching up on HawkTalk after being offline for a bit, and this is the thing I always go back to and I noticed @AdamRedSuit quoted the same line. None of my friends from high school went to Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, etc. On top of that, none of those schools are brands that are well-known - I would bet most folks outside of the midwest think EMU is a satellite campus of Michigan. If you asked a random person on the street if they’d rather watch 4-2 EMU or 2-4 App State, I bet most would pick the latter. The MAC has a branding problem that’s self-induced.
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Yager has shrunk several times and now seats around 24k. The scoreboard and practice facility both took stands with them. The sellout UC game this year was still under 25k and it was packed.
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Ps, I am not a MAC basher beyond the need for a new podium. I’d be proud to win it in hoops this year. Just reality that our local rivals mean more. If UD had a D1 football program it would be enormous. Same with X.
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Except MACtion created a mini-cult following -capturing non-traditional viewing times after we lose daylight savings time.
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Understood. But that was the only near capacity gsme we’ve had in ages. And it was grand!
Also need to keep in mind that our marketing needs to vary greatly depending on the different consumer segments we’re trying to attract. Getting people who live within an hour of Oxford to buy season tickets is a different strategy from getting alums living a few hours away to show up 1-2 games a year, which is also a different strategy from getting students to attend
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