SubGod22 wrote:
Rambler63 wrote:
GoRamblers wrote:
However, if you go over to the MVC board, you'll see that it dominates the discussion...it all comes down to attendance. It's bad enough that we embarrassed ourselves in non-conference play...the last thing we need is to have the schools regret our joining the conference. And we are getting dangerously close to that.
I posted a few things on the MVC board about attendance that didn't go over too well. Essentially, I said there's no solid correlation between attendance and on court performance, which is apparently some sort of blasphemy. I pointed out that the A-10 has lower average attendance than the MVC, and the West Coast conference is also higher ranked in conference strength than the MVC, but has 30% lower attendance. When I posted it, there were actually two West Coast Conference schools with average home attendance well under 1000 per game. The only reason the West Coast isn't 35 or 40% below the MVC is because they recently added BYU, which averages 12k. But attendance is a point of pride for MVC schools, especially Wichita State, which dominates the message board conversation over there. So the fainting couches were all fully occupied.
Look, there aren't that many urban college basketball schools that average more than schools in college or minor league towns, for fairly obvious reasons. For many MVC fans, their objections to having us in the conference--- as some may have figured out from some of the rhetoric--- is almost as much based on fear and loathing of large urban areas as it is on our well below average on court performance. Good attendance has been a point of pride for quite some time in the MVC, so it's a core tenet of their worldview. So I was probably naive in thinking I could try to use logic or facts to explain that we shouldn't be evaluated on how our attendance compares to Wichita or Peoria, and that (at least at first) comparing our attendance to George Washington, San Francisco, Portland, Loyola Marymount, or Fordham would make more sense. But they would have none of it, and why would they? Attendance is something they can pull out and use against us any time they need to discredit us.
Not to defend anyone from that board as I haven't posted there in a couple of years due to how the place is run, but for the better part of a decade, the MVC has had good attendance numbers and the more successful programs have had good numbers as well.
I'll admit that to WSU fans, attendance numbers have always been a source of pride. Even during the Lost Decade (90's) we averaged over 6k in what was easily the worst basketball the university has ever seen. We've taken a lot of pride in our past and our tradition and support is a big factor as to why. Schools that get good attendance tend to make more money and have a better overall financial leg. Too many MVC schools can only pay so much for a coach and at the first sign of success, they leave for bigger paychecks at jobs that really aren't any better when it comes to winning or having post season success. If Wichita is "stuck" in the MVC, they want others to improve and keep their coaches longer. Packing an arena helps. 3G has said on a number of occassions that it'll be hard to ever leave Wichita as they have a packed arena every game, great support from the community, boosters that'll pay to help the program out and he's rewarded financially for his hard work.
You point to the WCC but it's full of small private schools who for the most part, on that good. Gonzaga has kept Few around a long time and pay him well. SMC has recently come onto the stage and I have no info on their coaching situation. BYU is a whole other animal. But for the most part, the rest of that conference blows. There is from time to time a school or two that has a decent one or two year run but no staying power. Gonzaga also had to pimp itself out for years to rake in money so they could pay their coach. It's not as bad today since they won their fair share of games and can put together a decent schedule now and have built a reputation.
As for the A10, there's also been a lot of fluctuation among many of those and very little stability in success. Teams rise and fall and there are some really horrific programs at the bottom of the conference. And typically, those programs that don't have strong attendance numbers don't have staying power or the financial ability to elevate their programs to the next level of competition. They can have some good runs, but there's very little sustained success.
And I'm not going to lie, strong attendance equals a better game day atmosphere which helps recruiting both fans and players. Both of which can help the long term health and success of a program.
I agree with all those points, however we
are a private school in an urban environment that would almost certainly be in the West Coast Conference if we were in, say, Seattle or Sacramento instead of Chicago. There's not much we can do about that. The most similar school to Loyola that has managed to buck the prevailing factors we're up against on attendance has been Marquette, which has been outdrawing us by far since the 1950s or before, and is now in the Big East. They had some lean years in the 1990s, but a National Championship in the late 1970s, consistent tournament appearances, and a Final Four run in 2003 helped sustain them to the point where they're drawing 14-15k.
The point I would make on attendance, and one that you allude to in your post, is that it is mostly a trailing indicator that follows, not preceeds, sustained success. Fifteen years ago, Butler was drawing crowds in the high 3000s in 10000-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse. After a decade of making tournament appearance and getting ranked, they're pulling around 7500 per game for conference games. Around 2006-07, we were drawing pretty good (for us), with an overall average close to 2800 or so and occasional crowds over 4000 (against Butler, UIC, and high profile non-con games) when we finished in the upper half of the Horizon for three years in a row. If we could put together a solid run in the top half of the MVC for three to five years, maybe with a postseason tournament appearance mixed in there, I truly believe we could get close to 3500 or more on average, which would be a nice atmosphere in our smaller venue. I think that's a reasonable, achieveable target to shoot for. Stars, planets, comets, and all the other heavenly bodies would have to align in bizzare, unlikely ways for demand to constantly exceed the current capacity. Besides, I'd prefer to concentrate on the more pressing matters at hand, like the mammouth task of putting together a solid, sustainable program and reversing a couple of decades of bad or mediocre basketball.