No way it's peaked. Unless we start losing frequently.
No way it's peaked. Unless we start losing frequently.
Hell Make it seat 200K I dont GAS, Ive been to My Last one. That having to take my Hat off to make sure I wasnt "Smuggling" in Water or whatever. did it for Me. I can Drink my Beer and watch in A/C comfort at Home, Plus NOT spend 600 Bucks for a weekend
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If God wanted Men to look women in the eyes, He wouldnt have gave em Boobs !
I would say that it's mainly because tickets for non-students/alumni has gone way up and making it less appealing to go to games with all the costs associated with it.. I mean, I graduated in 2011 and loved going to all the games with my season tickets and basically could get front seats! (Ah, the golden days of being a student!!) Now, if I go to a game I will be lucky to find a decent priced ticket that seats me on the very top corner of the stadium, have to pay for parking, plus the food that sells inside the stadium is ridiculously expensive. How about all coaches take a pay cut instead so they make things a tad more affordable?Originally Posted by tycat947
Even the students with the cheap, subsidized tickets aren't filling their section anymore... the only empty seats in the house are in the upper left corner of their section, usually. You're seeing it at student sections across the country --- the worst seats go unfilled. If it's an 11 a.m. kickoff, student attendance is even worse, regardless of the opponent.
Athletic departments seem more concerned with the here and now than their fanbase of the future, but some are at least addressing the problem. You've seen it with basketball attendance --- they put ticket prices too high, they milked alums too much, they didn't make students want to attend when they were students continuously, and you see a lot of empties now. Will this happen in football? Will fan interest wane after they are pushed too far?
Ask me in a few months, not while I'm still living vicariously through our awesome Sugar Bowl win over the almighty Saban Bammers. Excuse me, I need to go wear my Sooner Magic t-shirt
Perhaps if there's someone closer in age to today's students you can explain why the students aren't turning out. I attended grad school at OU in the mid-80's and there was never any problem filling the student section with very....excited...fans. If there's something that much more compelling in Norman on an autumn Saturday, please let me in on the secret.
"I don't know karate, but I know ka-razor!" - James Brown
I attended 2001-05, but was in band every fall
While attending, a lot of people I lived with/around would leave early due to having postgame plans, or it just being too damn hot
This was also around the time that TV seemed obsessed with starting our games at 11 a.m., so that also made some people not want to show up. (Sidenote: it also made morning band rehearsals start at 5 a.m. or so... gag)
I don't know if students still abuse this, but I also recall that some of the prime early opponent games were trying to get resold for a few hundred each. I'm not even talking OU-Texas, but games like unranked Miami. So, some are more interested in money than attending, but the older fans are guilty of this too on occasion. I paid $125 each to attend 2008 Tech, and that was the lowest price I could find that night. Many were asking $200-300 each
Didn't OU have a 103% attendance last year?
Anyway, it was a pretty depressing season until it's storybook ending. People were passing out and miserable during the ULM game. WVU confirmed that we were going to have a rough year with QB's. Things picked up, but the Texas game proved that Bell wasn't the answer. Beating an overrated Tech team brought out hopes back up, and many (crazy) students even went to Waco on a Thursday night and were back for class on Friday. That was disgusting, and nobody had interest in seeing us play Iowa State.
Students will show up for good games. They'll fill up every OU/OSU and OU/Texas game, and the line for the ND game started more than 24 hours beforehand. It's a large time commitment to make for a game against Iowa State, though, and nobody wants to pass out just for the opportunity to watch us play ULM.
I get that people of any age enjoy conquest more than defeat. And the mid-80's had waaaaay more of the former than the latter. (oh, glorious day when Texas still had negative offense well into the third quarter - seriously it strongly resembled clubbing baby seals. And, if you can't get your shoulder behind watching UT get rag dolled like a pit bull on a kitten, then you just aren't a fan).
And I am not talking away games much; they're always weather, season, etc specific.
I've just noticed that the student section seems less 'rolicking' than it once was and wondered if anyone had insight into that. Maybe it has to do with prices. I can't recall exactly, but I don't recall my season tickets costing that much way back when. But then my memory could be flawed. Hell, I'd have given bone marrow to get season tickets when I was a student. Come to think of it, I might have done just that.
"I don't know karate, but I know ka-razor!" - James Brown
I wonder how much of the empty corners in the student section is due to students squeezing into the prime sections. I remember back when I was in junior high (mid '80s) my brother and I would go to games with my older brother and sister who were students. I think we used regular tickets but always crammed into seats between the 40 and 50 yard lines in the student section. I remember one game there was probably 30% more fans on the row than seats.
Back then the student section had assigned seating but almost nobody followed it. The general rule was if you want your assigned seat then you better get there early enough so that those you're kicking out have a place to move to - although there was always one or two jerks who would show up right before the start wanting their seats.
Anyway, I think they control access to the student section a lot better now. That means that most fans in the student section have to have a student ticket. But I imagine the students still cram in to the best sections so that leaves the less desirable sections a lot more empty.
No doubt they police the stadium much more thoroughly now. I can remember bringing glass liquor bottles in in '85, 86-ish. They were already tense about it, but I had a coat with pockets big enough to pour into solo cups without pulling the bottle. Very nice when you were there and it started sleeting.
"I don't know karate, but I know ka-razor!" - James Brown
I don't believe ticket prices have anything to do with it. They offer free basketball tickets and still only get a couple hundred at the games. And this isn't just an OU problem but a national problem that many schools are having. I just read a day or two ago of some BCS school was reducing the number of student tickets offered as student attendance had gone from a 9,000 per game average down to around 6,000. This is just going to get worse year by year as the younger generation ages and the older generation dies off. I believe that's why Joe C/David B are hesitant to expand any capacity of OMC. They sure want to improve the athlete/fan experience and amenities but are being real careful about overbuilding the number of seats in OMC.
It's probably a little harder, but it's not difficult to get into the student section with a random (cheapest you can find) ticket and expired ID.
We (or at least I) was talking nationally. And by "peaked", I mean that it's not going any higher, not that it's going to go down.
Not till we expand the stadium or start bribing fire officials to look the other way I guess. Can't really fit any more people in than we already are
Back then they didn't check ID. Even when I was in school they didn't. Speaking of, my expired 1994 ID probably isn't going to get me into the student section. I'm not sure what's changed more - the ID or me.
The games I've been to recently have had pretty good student attendance. (Basketball is a whole different issue though!)
I think things are actually better in that regard than when I was in school. Not only were we mediocre (little did we know how bad it would get a few years later) but being a fan wasn't really fashionable back then. It definitely wasn't cool to wear OU stuff on non-game days. I remember seeing more Michigan (Fab Five) attire around campus than OU attire.
I think it was the worst time. It was close enough to the Switzer years that people remembered how things were supposed to be. It was far enough away that to the media the '85 title might as well have been 100 years ago. I remember more excitement during the Blake years simply because people had dropped the expectation that we were supposed to compete.
The ID itself would probably be an issue if it's significantly different. The picture would probably be fine, though. As long as the picture is the same skin color and gender, you're probably going to get through. It could be quite difficult for a male to get in with a female's ID...but I'd be lying if I said I've never seen it done. It was done with great caution, though.
But I just changed my signature recently . . .
Ukraine: Not Our Fight.
More epicycles!
I'm talking national attendance.
Ah... well, Kentucky just gave Mark Stoops an extension for a 2-win season and average home attendance of 9700, so maybe standards are lower these days
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