[Jonathan Carone]

I can totally buy that. Apologies for misreading it.

[Liberty22]

I can totally buy that. Apologies for misreading it.

Apology accepted, let’s go get drinks. Kool Aid of course.

[Jonathan Carone]

I’ll have to pass on the Kool Aid. Went on Kool Aid benders from 2006-2010. Realized I had a problem in 2011. Been trying to cut back ever since.

[flameshaw]

I think the low attendance shows the lack of excitement and low expectations around the program from alumni and out of town fans. You’re relying predominantly on students, their families, and locals. 17k is a great base and is right in line with where we’ve been the last few years. We just haven’t created a reason for 5000 out of town fans to drive in and spend the day on the mountain.

Agree 100%. I live 2.5 hours away. I probably wouldn't have come to yesterday's game after that big turd we left in NM. However, I did have some out-of-state family in L'burg, so I made the trip. It is hard to make that drive with such a Jeckel and Hyde team effort, inconsistent performances, etc. Because of the many detours yesterday from the Hurricane, I almost came back home about an hour out from my house. Glad I still made the trip, the win was worth it.

I've noticed 2/3's of FBS teams are doing the same thing. Only a handful are consistent week in and week out

Not many are Baylor/St. Francis inconsistent. I think we hold that position exclusively.

[Cider Jim]

Dude. “17k is a great base” is right there in the post. How is saying something is “great” acting like we are drawing peanuts?

Coastal called. They are in last place in the Sun Belt and had 11,506 fans yesterday watching their beloved beach chickens lose 45-20 to UL Monroe.

http://www.espn.com/college-football/ga ... =401021674

[Purple Haize]

You quoted my post. That’s usually a sign that you’re speaking directly to what someone said.

I was quoting PH response to your post but not just PH, but the others who always act like we don’t draw well. I was too lazy to delete your post as I’m on my phone and it’s annoying waiting word by word as you delete on a phone.

I knew you were quoting me
17 k is a good draw. It’s in line with what LU had at peak FCS games The expectation by many on this Board was that people would materialize because LU is FBS and made huge additions to the Stadium.
17 k is a respectable number. I would think off the top of my head it’s Middle of the road for FBS. For every Big House....there’s Coastal. But the question needs to be answered how to drive that number up to meet the expanded stadium

[TH Spangler]

You quoted my post. That’s usually a sign that you’re speaking directly to what someone said.

I was quoting PH response to your post but not just PH, but the others who always act like we don’t draw well. I was too lazy to delete your post as I’m on my phone and it’s annoying waiting word by word as you delete on a phone.

I knew you were quoting me
17 k is a good draw. It’s in line with what LU had at peak FCS games The expectation by many on this Board was that people would materialize because LU is FBS and made huge additions to the Stadium.
17 k is a respectable number. I would think off the top of my head it’s Middle of the road for FBS. For every Big House....there’s Coastal. But the question needs to be answered how to drive that number up to meet the expanded stadium

Only way I see G5's turning around their attendance is to realign more regionally.

[willflop]

We are averaging about 17k now through three games.
Given that we still have a game on Saturday after Thanksgiving, and then an FCS on December 1, I don't expect this would improve. It could possibly drop into the 16k range. That's what we averaged last year, so we are on pace to see no real improvement attendance wise...despite FBS, a new stadium, and frankly a respectable record all things considered.

What's changed? Ticket prices, for one. I know this is a debated topic, but given a projected 16k average attendance, we may have some empiracle evidence. To push to 25k plus, we are going to have to attract the take it or leave it crowd that are not die hards, and thereby lose all the value of season tickets. It's prohibitive to ask a family of 4-6 to drop 150-200 dollars to spend a few hours in a stadium and eat microwaved hamburgers. I think the prices are reasonable for FBS, but I also believe in supply and demand, and the demand is proving to not be there. Fans need to be created, which is done by making access as easy as possible to get them in the door, then hope families get addicted to the environment and make a tradition of it.

Case in point, I read recently that softball has free admission. For someone that would have never gone before, I'll plan to take my kids to some next spring. This is not the same as football, but I think LU will have to continue to experiment with pricing models to see what the LU base can handle.

Lack of excitement is also true, but there was less reason for excitement last year with FCS schedule, coming off two 6/5 seasons, and no conference chanpionship or playoff chances.

[thepostman]

Correct me if I'm wrong but softball has always been free.

[willflop]

It may, but I just learned of it.

[Purple Haize]

We are averaging about 17k now through three games.
Given that we still have a game on Saturday after Thanksgiving, and then an FCS on December 1, I don't expect this would improve. It could possibly drop into the 16k range. That's what we averaged last year, so we are on pace to see no real improvement attendance wise...despite FBS, a new stadium, and frankly a respectable record all things considered.

What's changed? Ticket prices, for one. I know this is a debated topic, but given a projected 16k average attendance, we may have some empiracle evidence. To push to 25k plus, we are going to have to attract the take it or leave it crowd that are not die hards, and thereby lose all the value of season tickets. It's prohibitive to ask a family of 4-6 to drop 150-200 dollars to spend a few hours in a stadium and eat microwaved hamburgers. I think the prices are reasonable for FBS, but I also believe in supply and demand, and the demand is proving to not be there. Fans need to be created, which is done by making access as easy as possible to get them in the door, then hope families get addicted to the environment and make a tradition of it.

Case in point, I read recently that softball has free admission. For someone that would have never gone before, I'll plan to take my kids to some next spring. This is not the same as football, but I think LU will have to continue to experiment with pricing models to see what the LU base can handle.

Lack of excitement is also true, but there was less reason for excitement last year with FCS schedule, coming off two 6/5 seasons, and no conference chanpionship or playoff chances.

This is true. Not sure what the solution is at this point being so far removed from the process. It wasn’t long ago LU football tickets were being given away. So the mental step of having fans realize they actually have to pay to go see the games has been a huge paradigm shift

[TH Spangler]

Flatness this year has a little to do with weather. ODU and UNT were awful. I'm still optimistic. If we only draw 18K to the Syracuse game I'll start worrying. They should appoint someone to focus strictly on group sales.

[Jonathan Carone]

Dude. “17k is a great base” is right there in the post. How is saying something is “great” acting like we are drawing peanuts?

Coastal called. They are in last place in the Sun Belt and had 11,506 fans yesterday watching their beloved beach chickens lose 45-20 to UL Monroe.

http://www.espn.com/college-football/ga ... =401021674

Since when have we ever compared our attendance to Coastal’s? It’s been proven time and again that we draw more than they do and there are tons of reasons why.

[Jonathan Carone]

It’s too much trouble to quote it on mobile, but I think this line is the best thing said on the topic:

“What the LU base can handle”

Like it or not, our base of fan is not the intelligent die hard football fan. Our base doesn’t really understand G5 football, who the good teams are, and why prices have increased. They understand two things:

1) If we win.
2) If they have a good time and are entertained.

Those are the two biggest factors on getting people to games. We can lose some of the time if the games are entertaining and people will still show up. But our fan base is there for a show, not for great football.

Bringing it back to tickets - if we were winning more and/or putting on a good show, I think our games are perfectly priced. But four straight years of .500 football has mellowed out the excitement.

[amar0819]

2 questions:
1st/Does anyone think we'll ever get to the point where students have to buy tickets? All my friends that went to Penn st. took pride in being able to get tickets when they dropped online.

2nd/ I live in Charlotte, NC and I see bars/restaurants that have college alumni chapters set them up at a designated bar/restaurant watch parties for their school. Knowing there is a huge Liberty alumni base in Charlotte how does one go about getting a "restaurant" to sponsor/host the watch parties? I think it would be a ton of fun to start meeting up with fellow alumni and taking pride in our school now that we are on tv a little bit more.

[willflop]

My opinion on your first question is probably not. Tickets sold attendance tracking, from my understanding, allows you to count student tickets if 1) they buy a ticket; or 2) they swipe in for “free”, but they pay some sort of athletic fee that covers it, so it’s still being paid for indirectly. I’d assume with Penn State, or other schools like this, it goes back to supply and demand. Since they can actually sell all the seats, it’s a financial loss if they overshoot the student section. I think Liberty would expand the stadium before we ever got to that point, and our residential population will probably never get over 20k.

[BJWilliams]

This would be a great time for HMO to make an appearance to answer your second question. He could probably point you to an alumni chapter in and around Charlotte and then calling ahead and making the necessary arrangements.

As to your first question, you probably could, but alot of other factors have to be in play before that happens. I also disagree with the thought of resident enrollment never topping 20k. I think we certainly can get there

[Jonathan Carone]

Does anyone think we'll ever get to the point where students have to buy tickets? All my friends that went to Penn st. took pride in being able to get tickets when they dropped online.

I've often thought some form of ticket pick up during the week for students could be a benefit. If you stopped by the ticket off to grab your student ticket, it ensured that you got to sit on the first five rows between the 40's. Or whatever that section would be. Students could still get in by swiping on game day for free, but for those who want the great seats but still want to tailgate, having some form of way to make that happen would be great. We used to have the front row on the 50 reserved for us and we still had to get in the stadium 90 minutes early.

[R i]

Best Win in school history.

Don't let the haters steal your joy. I don't care if Troy loses the rest of their games by 40, when they came to Lynchburg on October 13th, they were ranked top 30 in the country and our favorite team beat them on a beautiful afternoon in a beautiful new stadium.

Its been said before, but one way we can fix the attendance numbers is for all the people trying to fix attendance numbers to actually attended a game or two.

I get that some folks have a different view of SuperFan than I do, but its not my job to identify and fix all the problems, its my job to support and be happy with HUGE WINS like this one. Its cool if you feel like your roll or your idea of a fan is to constantly be looking for areas to improve or identify how poor something is executed, but that seems like a miserable way to be a fan to me.

[R i]

For all the new readers on the board, this is a Troy Celebration thread. It quickly turned into a " This isn't sustainable" thread. Or " How can we fix the long period of time students have to be in stadium to get good seats " thread.

Its never enough. " A GOOD WIN BUT...................." that's what we need to start calling all of these threads.

[Chippy]

For all the new readers on the board, this is a Troy Celebration thread. It quickly turned into a " This isn't sustainable" thread. Or " How can we fix the long period of time students have to be in stadium to get good seats " thread.

Its never enough. " A GOOD WIN BUT...................." that's what we need to start calling all of these threads.

+1

[prototype]

Need to get coaching staff a calculator. Never go into Victory formation if you can't run the clock out. We should have simply run 3 straight times - maybe you get first down, maybe not - but you would run more time out. After Buckshot ran around that second down like he did - I thought it would be justified for the defense to blow him up the next down. And take the points and put the game out of reach. What message are we sending team - when we can't trust kicker to not get blocked on such a short kick.

[R i]

It worked . We won.

[TH Spangler]

Best Win in school history.

Don't let the haters steal your joy. I don't care if Troy loses the rest of their games by 40, when they came to Lynchburg on October 13th, they were ranked top 30 in the country and our favorite team beat them on a beautiful afternoon in a beautiful new stadium.

Its been said before, but one way we can fix the attendance numbers is for all the people trying to fix attendance numbers to actually attended a game or two.

I get that some folks have a different view of SuperFan than I do, but its not my job to identify and fix all the problems, its my job to support and be happy with HUGE WINS like this one. Its cool if you feel like your roll or your idea of a fan is to constantly be looking for areas to improve or identify how poor something is executed, but that seems like a miserable way to be a fan to me.

Amen

[Chippy]

Need to get coaching staff a calculator. Never go into Victory formation if you can't run the clock out. We should have simply run 3 straight times - maybe you get first down, maybe not - but you would run more time out. After Buckshot ran around that second down like he did - I thought it would be justified for the defense to blow him up the next down. And take the points and put the game out of reach. What message are we sending team - when we can't trust kicker to not get blocked on such a short kick.

He had an extra point blocked last week, If I remember correctly. His extra points were all scary low in this game as well.