Well my daughter wasn’t there. But she truly doesn’t give two shits about football. I think she went to three games in high school and that was only because the theater kids were working the concession stands to raise money. I tried, lord, I tried!!
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Not once have I ever had a shred of regret for spending my time in Yager. I only wish I would have had 6 more games my freshman year. I lived in Brandon and I could see the lights of the stadium while watching the ESPN+ stream. I would have killed to see that Ball State game in person.
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She’s not the demographic. We need the student who loves sports but is too lazy to head to Yeager. The ones who check scores on their phone uptown and play fantasy football with their friends in a league. There are at least 3,000 of those kinds of fans hiding in plain sight in the 513. The fan support issue to me has always been about finding the right persona who will come, not all personas as that to your point is a pointless waste of time trying to convert the non convertable.
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My daughter is not a big sports fan. She went to one home football game - Iowa. That’s another thing missing from this athletic program, the ability to bring in “name” opponents.
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@Digitalhawk The basketball players were there because they were introduced during a timeout.
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Those dudes have been at other events a lot. Their social media is full of pics of them supporting other teams. It’s a nice thing they do. And I think Chuck does the same with football where possible.
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First off, I’m not going to “complain” about attendance, as we just clinched a MACC appearance and have a chance to get to 10 wins before Detroit.
However, sometime Red Suit said disturbed me (and I think he’s right). I have heard for years, for both football and basketball, “Win, and they will come.” Well, we’re 9-2, and we beat our biggest rival for the first time in 18 years. Clearly, there’s much more to attendance than winning. I haven’t been to Nippert, but I would imagine the attendance and atmosphere blows ours out of the water, despite them having a 3-win team. Yes, I get it. Their enrollment is 2.5x that of ours. They’re in the middle of a big metro area. They’re in the Big XII, not that MAC. My point is, though, that even if they’re not winning, people still show up because the product on the field is not all that they come for. Is it fair? Perhaps not, but that’s college football in 2023.
My brother went to Ohio State and never set foot in a sporting event. Just wasn’t his thing at all. Some people don’t care for it.
You don’t know me and yet you pick at me. The five hour round trip is too difficult fir a 75 year old with a wife who for health reasons needs me nearby. You need to think before you post.
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I’m beginning to think a cult of obstinate indifference to varsity athletics has become entrenched on campus at Miami. It started sometime after 2004 because our culture was still in place the year we went to the Independence Bowl. The Shane Montgomery era is probably where it started and the DonT years apparently institutionalized the indifference. Unfortunately both hockey and basketball tanked during the last 15 years, as well. Support for football rallied briefly in 2010, 2016 and 2019 but the consistently near .500 football records from 2015 on have not rekindled much if any enthusiasm - especially when coupled with non-competitive hoops and hockey.
A “Miami varsity sports are fools gold so don’t get emotionally attached” attitude has possibly led to a culture of deliberate apathy. That might have created a campus cult of “it’s not cool to go.”
Hard to figure. Other G5 programs are going though a period of tremendous student support. Coastal Carolina, App State, UTSA, Marshall, ECU, Wyoming, Colorado State, Georgia Southern and others seem to have maintained their culture of student body support despite having up and down seasons. JMU and Tulane - both currently having tremendous football success - are the new poster children for solid G5 support. Even Ohio, with its leftover 60s hippy tradition, seems to show more student buy-in than Miami.
I don’t know what it’s going to take to dispel this culture of deliberate apathy. But a run of championship caliber football, basketball and hockey might help to serve as a catalyst.
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This is a very much overlooked. I bet our base is as low as it’s been in decades. The athletic department has to market to build it back up. Take a 25 mile radius of Oxford and really hammer that home. Winning will help and it will take some time.
The other point that RedSuit mentioned is in game entertainment. I was at the Toledo game and it was pretty brutal (no in game host interacting with fans). Use that new video board to your advantage. This and no premium seating options doesn’t make people want to be AT the game.
We need to mine that untapped Billingsville, IN market! And Drewersburg, IN. And where are our fans from Somerville, OH. The marketing potential is enormous! 
I felt some levity was in order.
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For long term attendance success, we need a segmentation study to figure out who the core audience is. The issue isn’t available bodies. It’s properly attracting the right ones. It is highly possible that as university enrollment has changed over the years the persona we used to have fill the seats has been reduced. But without a true understanding of the audience we can only guess. If we had 3k die harder and knew exactly who they were from a persona standpoint, we could start to build more around that.
That all said, there are ways to gamify the experience to get people to show up short term. And for big games, we might need to consider that.
You don’t know me. I will never think before I post.
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It’s just weird because I guarantee most of these kids went to every HS football/basketball/etc game when they were students and watch every dogshit every year Browns/old Bengals/now Steelers game each week but ask them to support their college and it’s gross. Math doesn’t add up.
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I have long argued we aim most of our most intense “attend the game” marketing at what is basically Oxford Township. We should be trying to claim Butler County as ours (traditionally a UK,OSU and UC hotbed) as well as the North Cincy and South Dayton burbs - where thousands of our prosperous alumni live.
Not to keep beating a dead horse, but the non-student attendance is certainly hurt by the fact that our alumni base is so spread out. Look at all FBS public universities outside the service academies and I’d bet we’re in the Bottom 3 (if not dead last) for the percent of alumni who live within a 90-minute drive with how many of our grads live in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, and so on. All of those fans (myself included) are out of the picture for any weeknight games, and with Oxford’s limited hotel situation it’s not easy/cheap to travel for a weekend game. With how bad or average we’ve been until this season it’s no surprise that people are apathetic. But it’s not impossible, look no further than those chumps over in Athens. They can do it, we can too.
Let me throw another “crazy” suggestion: How about inviting Miami’s own people to the games? As a faculty member, I received 0 (ZERO) emails about football this season. When I renewed my season ticket months ago, for curiosity’s sake, I asked whether professors had any discounts. After about 10 minutes of asking around, the ticket sales intern came back to me and said, “I don’t know, but I can give you a $2 discount.”
I don’t get it. We have a highly ranked business school, and Marketing is the #2 major in terms of enrollment (1200+ students). So why not reach out to the Marketing department and have experiential learning projects with some of the students?
I speak from my own experience trying to start projects with Athletics; Sometimes it feels like they are the Ivory Tower at Miami.
Ranting is over
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They tried it once. It was called Laws Hall and Associates.
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That is one thing the athletics dept does well, whether it’s driven by the coaches, admins, or the players, our student-athletes have always seemed to show up for each other when they can.
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