Student attendance off all sports, all colleges?

Re the Hockey forum discussion about poor attendance and timeliness habits of the Lynah Faithful, Letter From MetaEzra ... If everyone who doesn't go to watch Cornell hockey is out playing a sport on their own or at the gym staying in shape, that's a reasonable shift in attitudes over the course of a generation. I think it's been happening for a while.

I've heard that at major colleges with 50,000-100,000 -seat stadiums, the number of students is a handful, say 5,000, maybe 10,000. At Tennessee, students are blamed for the falloff that has attendance down by 3,000 per game, to 98,000: [blogs.knoxnews.com]. A decade ago, the Daily Pennsylvianian said the biggest falloff in attendance at Penn was among students, and that attendance at Ivy football games (all Ivy schools) was down 22%: [www.dailypennsylvanian.com]

In hoops, two years ago, ESPN online said Duke couldn't fill the student section, which is 1200 seats out of Cameron's 9314 capacity. [sports.espn.go.com] (Student admission price: free.) No attendance falloff last Saturday at Jadwin to see Princeton try to knock off Cornell.

I agree with your all your points. I particularly hate that the CU Athletic Dept is so stupid as to have hockey and basketball games at the same time so many weekends. Do what bigger colleges do - move one game up, one game back. Play hockey at 530 and basketball at 8 or some variation thereof. God forbid we we play a Sunday afternoon game when we could put our two biggest winter sports opposite one another - 7 pm every Friday and Saturday. It shows a real lack of imagination. CU should be doing everything it can to make sure we sell out Lynah and Newman (because sadly we don't anymore...).

That was the largest crowd at Princeton in 6 years

We are not the only ones complaining about scheduling, this article in Harvard's student newspaper talked about how they are not happy that hockey and basketball are at the same time. Also makes the case that Harvard's biggest rival is not Yale anymore but Cornell
[www.thecrimson.com]

I think this years was unfortunate with scheduling because last year I remember there were no basketball,hockey conflicts but this year there were about 5 or 6 conflicts. I do agree they need to be more creative with scheduling, Princeton had the game at 6pm the another night. Although in terms of sellouts they did sellout the Clarkson and Harvard games on the same night. I dont know about hockey sellouts but basketball has had very good attendance this year even on hockey nights with most basketball games being practically a sellout

CUontheslopes
I agree with your all your points. I particularly hate that the CU Athletic Dept is so stupid as to have hockey and basketball games at the same time so many weekends. Do what bigger colleges do - move one game up, one game back. Play hockey at 530 and basketball at 8 or some variation thereof. God forbid we we play a Sunday afternoon game when we could put our two biggest winter sports opposite one another - 7 pm every Friday and Saturday. It shows a real lack of imagination. CU should be doing everything it can to make sure we sell out Lynah and Newman (because sadly we don't anymore...).

Last time I checked, the Ivy League is committed to the ideals of the student athlete. You can't possibly change the time of the games and not have some negative impact on the quality of the student life or the game. A 5.30 hockey game on a Friday makes no sense because then even the townies couldn't show up in force and do you really want the team playing on less than 24 hours rest? Basketball games can't start any later because on Friday no team is going to want to have the 4 hour drive ahead of them to NYC at 10pm or later, or in the case of the eastern teams, the 7+ hour trip back. (Bus drivers are limited to the amount of time they can spend on the road). I imagine it's also prohibitively costly to put a team up in a hotel an extra night.

The lack of attendance at hockey is due to one simple thing - cost. It is easy to find a lot of people who are interested in going to the game, but if you want a pair of tickets to a weekend matchup, you'd already be out 52$ compared to 0$ for basketball.

CUontheslopes
I agree with your all your points. I particularly hate that the CU Athletic Dept is so stupid as to have hockey and basketball games at the same time so many weekends. Do what bigger colleges do - move one game up, one game back. Play hockey at 530 and basketball at 8 or some variation thereof. God forbid we we play a Sunday afternoon game when we could put our two biggest winter sports opposite one another - 7 pm every Friday and Saturday. It shows a real lack of imagination. CU should be doing everything it can to make sure we sell out Lynah and Newman (because sadly we don't anymore...).

Wouldn't it be even easier to have them alternate home and away weekends? Why have BBall and hockey home on the same weekend and then both away the next? You wouldn't have to worry about getting people to show up for an early game or teams having to drive home after a really late game. Granted, the games would still be at the same time, but it would be easier to attend more of the home games. True, people that travel to watch the hockey wouldn't be here to watch BBall, but that's a smaller group than the overall pool of home sports attendees. Plus, then there would be something to do in Ithaca more weekends.

CK

Someone should donate a new arena. We trash Lynah and Newman and combine them into one venue where the ice and the court are in the same place. That'll solve the problem.

CKinsland

CUontheslopes
I agree with your all your points. I particularly hate that the CU Athletic Dept is so stupid as to have hockey and basketball games at the same time so many weekends. Do what bigger colleges do - move one game up, one game back. Play hockey at 530 and basketball at 8 or some variation thereof. God forbid we we play a Sunday afternoon game when we could put our two biggest winter sports opposite one another - 7 pm every Friday and Saturday. It shows a real lack of imagination. CU should be doing everything it can to make sure we sell out Lynah and Newman (because sadly we don't anymore...).

Wouldn't it be even easier to have them alternate home and away weekends? Why have BBall and hockey home on the same weekend and then both away the next? You wouldn't have to worry about getting people to show up for an early game or teams having to drive home after a really late game. Granted, the games would still be at the same time, but it would be easier to attend more of the home games. True, people that travel to watch the hockey wouldn't be here to watch BBall, but that's a smaller group than the overall pool of home sports attendees. Plus, then there would be something to do in Ithaca more weekends.

CK

"Easier"? Suggestions like this presume that the other seven Ivies can and want to accommodate our desire to create a basketball schedule that mirrors our hockey schedule, to the exclusion of their own scheduling considerations - or that the ECAC can and wants to accommodate our desire to create a hockey schedule that mirrors our basketball schedule. I doubt either is remotely the case.

Beeeej

"Easier"? Suggestions like this presume that the other seven Ivies can and want to accommodate our desire to create a basketball schedule that mirrors our hockey schedule, to the exclusion of their own scheduling considerations - or that the ECAC can and wants to accommodate our desire to create a hockey schedule that mirrors our basketball schedule. I doubt either is remotely the case.

There are also the considerations of the six non-Ivy ECACH schools. No easy solution, I'm afraid. Even changing the times of the games can be a problem given travel requirements from travel partners, especially in basketball between Columbia and Cornell.

Beeeej

CKinsland

CUontheslopes
I agree with your all your points. I particularly hate that the CU Athletic Dept is so stupid as to have hockey and basketball games at the same time so many weekends. Do what bigger colleges do - move one game up, one game back. Play hockey at 530 and basketball at 8 or some variation thereof. God forbid we we play a Sunday afternoon game when we could put our two biggest winter sports opposite one another - 7 pm every Friday and Saturday. It shows a real lack of imagination. CU should be doing everything it can to make sure we sell out Lynah and Newman (because sadly we don't anymore...).

Wouldn't it be even easier to have them alternate home and away weekends? Why have BBall and hockey home on the same weekend and then both away the next? You wouldn't have to worry about getting people to show up for an early game or teams having to drive home after a really late game. Granted, the games would still be at the same time, but it would be easier to attend more of the home games. True, people that travel to watch the hockey wouldn't be here to watch BBall, but that's a smaller group than the overall pool of home sports attendees. Plus, then there would be something to do in Ithaca more weekends.

CK

"Easier"? Suggestions like this presume that the other seven Ivies can and want to accommodate our desire to create a basketball schedule that mirrors our hockey schedule, to the exclusion of their own scheduling considerations - or that the ECAC can and wants to accommodate our desire to create a hockey schedule that mirrors our basketball schedule. I doubt either is remotely the case.

Beat me to it Beeeej. You have two different scheduling organizations for hockey and basketball. Cornell can probably request certain accomodations (see Harvard, Beanpot) but neither league has any requirement to meet them. Especially when the request covers the entire winter sports season.

Regarding time changes, I was under the impression that the ECAC mandates that games start at 7pm, with exceptions granted by the league for such things as TV, etc. Or at least that's what it seemed like when they switched the start times of Friday games df Friday games from 7:30 to 7pm andeveryone here hated it.

Willy '06
Someone should donate a new arena. We trash Lynah and Newman and combine them into one venue where the ice and the court are in the same place. That'll solve the problem.

Can we ban this poster? Please? Age?

Willy '06
Someone should donate a new arena. We trash Lynah and Newman and combine them into one venue where the ice and the court are in the same place. That'll solve the problem.

Tangent: In Quinnipiac's new sports venue, there are separate arenas for hockey and basketball, but they share a common entrance lobby. I wonder how much of a headache that must be when they've got both going on at the same time.

Josh '99
Tangent: In Quinnipiac's new sports venue, there are separate arenas for hockey and basketball, but they share a common entrance lobby. I wonder how much of a headache that must be when they've got both going on at the same time.

Their biggest problem would be the traffic jam caused by all of them leaving at halftime and after the second period.

KeithK
Regarding time changes, I was under the impression that the ECAC mandates that games start at 7pm, with exceptions granted by the league for such things as TV, etc. Or at least that's what it seemed like when they switched the start times of Friday games df Friday games from 7:30 to 7pm andeveryone here hated it.

A fair number of Saturday games start at 4 -- IINM, many of the ones at Colgate.

Edit: I lied. The Colgate ECAC non-7 games this year were:

11/9 Dartmouth (4)
12/5 at RPI (4)