Vermont/Dartmouth Weekend

[Killer]

Have to agree with your assessment about the fans.  They were a pretty pathetic bunch.  Many, many empty seats, no spirit, no coordination.  Save for cheering for their goals, about the only noise they made was when we got a "Let's go Red!" cheer going and they tried to counter with "Green!".  Wusses.

One has to wonder if when Dartmouth plays Harvard, anyone even shows up.

[Tub(a)]

[Q]Killer Wrote:

 Have to agree with your assessment about the fans.  They were a pretty pathetic bunch.  Many, many empty seats, no spirit, no coordination.  Save for cheering for their goals, about the only noise they made was when we got a "Let's go Red!" cheer going and they tried to counter with "Green!".  Wusses.

One has to wonder if when Dartmouth plays Harvard, anyone even shows up.[/q]

If you think Cornell Athletics is harsh, the folks at Dartmouth are 10 times worse.

When the band went last year, we were told "not to play when the team comes on the ice." I asked their band how they could tolerate this sort of overarching athletics control and they just shrugged. Apparently, the band didn't always go to hockey games, and athletics put a PR/Media man in charge of operations. He thinks he's in charge of an NHL game and has tight controls on everything.

[Dart~Ben]

I was biting my tongue after CowbellGuy's remarks, but enough's enough. Especially when some of your remarks are so off base it's laughable.

Dartmouth-Harvard last year in Thompson Arena had people standing outside in sub-freezing temperatures watching through the windows because it was sold out. Largest (and best) crowd I've ever seen for a Dartmouth game, and I'd expect this year's to be just as big considering Harvard has had our number as much as we have yours (no one on this year's team has beaten Harvard.)

And remind me again who led the ECAC in attendance last year? It wasn't the Lynah Faithful or the nuts at the Gut. I'm not going to claim we're the best fan base, but considering where it was 5 years ago following the 20th straight losing season, I'm definitely happy with the direction it's headed.

As far as the band goes, 2 years ago the athletics department asked the band if they wanted to work every hockey game. They were going to pay them to do it. The band told them thanks but no thanks, they didn't want to work fulltime in the winter. So don't act like the Dartmouth band is a victim. They had their chance to have a more prominent role and declined it.

Plus, have you heard them? They suck, frankly, and when certain songs have been "ritualized" into the atmosphere (like U2 before the intros, Opus before the 3rd period, Zombie Nation after goals, etc), the band just gets in the way. The only good thing I can say about the band at hockey games is that they yell at the opposing goalie. Otherwise, I couldn't care less about whether they came to games or not.

And screw you, we got Keggy the Keg. That trumps all. :-D :-}

[Dart~Ben]

[Q]Killer Wrote:
One has to wonder if when Dartmouth plays Harvard, anyone even shows up.[/q]

And by the way, the two Dartmouth-Harvard regular season games last year:
http://www.collegehockeystats.com/0304/boxes/mdarhar1.n08 (Att: 4500 - sellout)
http://www.collegehockeystats.com/0304/boxes/mdarhar1.f28 (Att: 2776 - sellout)

If you're going to bash my school, at least do it correctly.

[Will]

[Q]Dart~Ben Wrote:

And remind me again who led the ECAC in attendance last year? It wasn't the Lynah Faithful or the nuts at the Gut. I'm not going to claim we're the best fan base, but considering where it was 5 years ago following the 20th straight losing season, I'm definitely happy with the direction it's headed. [/q]

When you start selling out each and every home game for an entire season or two, then you'll be able to talk about attendance.  Otherwise, you're still the team with close to two empty sections throughout the majority of the game.

The, uh, Thompson Faithful are on the right path, but like you said,  they've still got a long way to go.

And, with regard to Keggy, you should bring him on the road trip to Lynah. ;-)

[Dart~Ben]

True enough, although I will point out that Dartmouth is roughly 1/3rd the size of Cornell (4,400 undergrads to 13,600 undergrads), Hanover is helluva lot smaller than Ithaca, and hell, Cornell alone is bigger than Hanover andthe Dartmouth student body combined. And yet our arena is roughly 15-20% bigger. You could fit the entire Dartmouth student body into Thompson and it wouldn't be a sellout.

Not excusing the late arriving fans who pissed me off as much as anyone when I was a student, but sheer demographics say it's a lot harder to fill 4500 seats in Hanover than 3800 seats in Ithaca

[Killer]

Seems to me I did do it correctly.  I wondered if anyone shows up.  OK, so they do.  So what?  Whatever number of so-called Dartmouth fans it was that showed up last Saturday, they were still pathetic when it came to supporting the team.  If you're gonna be that quiet, go to the library.  Are they as piss-poor when you play Harvard?

And, BTW, I don't know how you guys report your attendance, but you have to take Harvard's numbers with a grain of salt.  I went to the BC-Harvard game at Harvard last week.  The official attendance was 2776, a sellout.  Yeah, in their friggin' dreams.  They may have sold all the tickets, but there had to be five or six hundred empty seats, and no way those seats could have been filled by the folks standing.  They just don't support their team.

[Killer]

Oh yeah, and just to comment further on your attendance numbers, last year's Cornell game at Dartmouth was reported to have had 4182 people there.  That would be only 318 short of capacity.  Well, having been to that game as well, I can report that if you'd put another 1,000 people into the place, you'd still have had empty seats.

[billhoward]

[Q]Dart~Ben Wrote:

True enough, although I will point out that Dartmouth is roughly 1/3rd the size of Cornell (4,400 undergrads to 13,600 undergrads), Hanover is helluva lot smaller than Ithaca, and hell, Cornell alone is bigger than Hanover andthe Dartmouth student body combined. And yet our arena is roughly 15-20% bigger. You could fit the entire Dartmouth student body into Thompson and it wouldn't be a sellout. Not excusing the late arriving fans who pissed me off as much as anyone when I was a student, but sheer demographics say it's a lot harder to fill 4500 seats in Hanover than 3800 seats in Ithaca[/q]

Size matters to Dartmouth men, eh? Small town, small turnout, small ...

Maybe it's the quality of the fans that matters more than the size of the student body or the town or surrounding area. University of North Dakota (enrollment 11,000 undergrads) has no problem filling an 11,500 seat arena in a city that's bigger than Hanover in a state that's smaller (population) than New Hampshire.

Published attendance figures are a joke at many schools. Cornell at Princeton games are reported as sellouts, but if the place is four-fifths full for the Cornell game in Princeton, that's pretty good, and no other game comes close in attendance or noise (not Princeton's noise). Not surprisingly, schools seem more interested in looking good than reporting how many tickets stubs were actually collected.

Too bad for Dartmouth that pouring grain alcohol down the throats of weekending Pine Manor women isn't recognized by the NCAA as a varsity sport. Then the Big Green would be true NCAA offense leaders in one winter sport.

[KeithK]

[q]Published attendance figures are a joke at many schools. ... Not surprisingly, schools seem more interested in looking good than reporting how many tickets stubs were actually collected. [/q]I don't think may sports/leagues report turnstile count anymore, long ago switching to ticket sales as a measure.  Which makes some sense from the perspective of a pro or big-time college team, since it's the sale that's paying the bills not the turnstile.

[Will]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

I don't think may sports/leagues report turnstile count anymore, long ago switching to ticket sales as a measure.  Which makes some sense from the perspective of a pro or big-time college team, since it's the sale that's paying the bills not the turnstile.[/q]

Generally, yes, unless things like concessions are taken into account.  5,000 sold-out, empty seats will buy no hot dogs.  Perhaps there are stub counts done for this purpose, just not published for the public, since obviously "sellout" looks better than "70% filled".

[Greg Berge]

Arguing about attendance is a sure sign that we lost the game...

[kaelistus]

Greg, well said... Dartmouth is the new Union (except good against the rest of the league).

Nice to see you posting again, Dart~Ben. Your comments are always an interesting read.

[Robb]

[Q]Dart~Ben Wrote:

 I was biting my tongue after CowbellGuy's remarks, but enough's enough. Especially when some of your remarks are so off base it's laughable.

Edited 1 times. Last edit at 11/22/04 07:44PM by Dart~Ben.[/q]

CowbellGuy's remarks were right on base, however.  I watched the game on the free video that Dartmouth was kind enough to provide (are you listening, Cornell Athletics!?).  The Dartmouth crowd was pretty sparse and pretty quiet - completely commensurate with the crowds I've seen there in person on at least 5 occasions.

[Dart~Ben]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
 University of North Dakota (enrollment 11,000 undergrads) has no problem filling an 11,500 seat arena in a city that's bigger than Hanover in a state that's smaller (population) than New Hampshire. [/q]

North Dakota hockey is also the only D1 sport in the state, at least traditionally (I forget if NDSU and/or NoDak have moved up to 1-AA officially or not). It's not unlike Nebraska football, in that people will make weekends out of the games and travel from all corners of the state and beyond. They are an entity unto themselves in college hockey in that regard, the only other team that might be in a similar situation is Maine.

Dartmouth, or Cornell, will never become their state's "team" like North Dakota or Nebraska simply because they're private schools (and in the case of New York, there's the whole professional sports thing too). Because of that, they have to rely on students and the local community. I saw the same thing at Creighton in Omaha. They've always gotten tremendous support from the Omaha area. They are arguably Nebraska's best sports team at the moment, having posted 20-win seasons in hoops for 6-7 years straight and beaten Nebraska in 7 of the last 8 meetings or something like that. But as you head toward Lincoln and farther west, people will tell you they'll root for the Huskers over the Bluejays any day of the week.

It is going to be interesting to be at Thompson tonight for Dartmouth-Maine. Apparently the game's already sold-out, though with students on Thanksgiving break the campus and town are absolutely dead (I'm typing this from campus, and no one is around). I'm not going to be shocked, though I will be dismayed, to find the entire arena packed to the rafters and then the entire student section empty. Hopefully the ticket office/athletic department cut the student section by a section or two like they do for the Christmas Tournament games and opened up those seats for sale.