Other than Creighton what B East schools sell out?

[Bluejay]

JRoc, how about putting down the flamethrower for a minute?

I think a discussion about attendance and TV ratings, etc. is a legitimate topic, but you are hindering any discussion with your style. Big East fans aren't Wichita St fans. Relax.

[dmac80]

In years past PC would sell out for senior night, notre dame, Louisville, UCONN, cuse, etc....so far this year the opener against BC was 11,100 and 11,026 against Creighton (with majority of students not back from break). They drew around 10 vs Gtown (again with no students) everything else has been 6500-8500 not counting tonight's 9pm blizzard game. Capacity is 12,500 I believe. If the program returns to winning and higher expectations as seems headed under Ed Cooley I'd expect to see the numbers rise, in the early 90s they averaged over 10k a game for the season.

The team that disappoints me most is Georgetown. For a so called major program they don't draw all that well, they play their games in that NBA arena which on tv seems usually half full at best. They drew a paltry 9k against rivAl Marquette last night. It's a down year but still. They could really use a smaller on campus arena.

I know when the johnnies are strong they can bang out MSG. I firmly believe if it weren't for Creighton's stellar attendance they may not have been added (simply because they are so far west).

But I agree attendance needs to be a bit stronger for most of he others outside Marquette and Creighton.

That being said, Georgetown suffers from some decidedly different problems from other BE schools. Georgetown is far and away the most prestigious academic institution in the conference and as such they are a truly national school. Their student body is 17,000 students, but is over half post-grads (I believe the law school alone is around 2,000 students). Post-grads are less likely to be interested in sports programs as they are focused on academics (and often root more strongly for their undergrad institution anyway). Georgetown graduates also get job offers from all over the country and can wind up in just about every major city. Marquette, for example, has a large portion of its alumni in the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor. Much easier to get to Milwaukee from Chicago for a game then it is to get to D.C. from L.A. or Dallas or Chicago. The arena is really far from campus too, which makes it even harder for students to get there. Marquette students can take a 15 minute stroll from school to the Bradley Center (25 if you are already drunk). Finally, Georgetown has to compete with any number of professional teams (Wizards, Capitals, Nationals, Redskins, D.C. United, even George Washington University this year). It's not easy to get attention if they aren't in the top 10.

Bollocks. Georgetown is not THAT far from the Verizon Center and DC has significantly better public transportation than Milwaukee. I think DC being such a transient city, where alums from all over the country come to work, makes some difference. But the student section has been getting pretty weak and their alums in the city don't come out as strong as they should or used to. I don't know what the problem is, but there isn't much passion in that building past few years.

A deep run in the NCAAs might help, haven't they been 1 and done the last 5 or 6 years or something?

[Jim Neutron]

I don't think attendance is a huge issue, it would look nice on TV to see all the big east games sold out, but not all that important.

The one thing that concerns me, is how will attendance be for the conference tournament? I think that is very important, and with a lot of the big attendance drawing schools out, how will that affect attendance?

[Phillycat]

Villanova has averaged roughly 17k+ since 2005 in 36 games played downtown. A majority of these games came against Syracuse, Louisville, UConn and Pitt. 9 of these games before this year have been against current Big East teams (5 Georgetown, 2 Marquette, 1 Saint Johns and 1 Providence) and have averaged almost 18k. Georgetown is the only team of those 4 that has had games with greater than 19K (4-5). The average was at 19k+ prior to the disastrous 2010-2011 season and has dropped significantly since averaging only 15k from that year forward. The Creighton game drew 14k which to me is concerning. I'm afraid the number will linger around there this year as two of three remaining games down there are during the student's break (awful scheduling of these games by the AD also has contributed to lackluster attendance of late including head scratchers like Boston U during finals week and Delaware over a break). Pitt, Syracuse and Uconn always were great draws due to being regional rivalries and I'm afraid the Big East moving out west has made the casual Philadelphia fan indifferent to the new conference as there are fewer ties to the schools out there. Hope I'm wrong but Monday wasn't encouraging. What brings our number way down is playing in the 6500 seat dump on campus. Other random thought is that I agree with the fact that Georgetown needs an on campus arena or something smaller anywhere for lesser opponents.

[TrueBlueJay]

I don't think attendance is a huge issue, it would look nice on TV to see all the big east games sold out, but not all that important.

The one thing that concerns me, is how will attendance be for the conference tournament? I think that is very important, and with a lot of the big attendance drawing schools out, how will that affect attendance?

How is attendance NOT a huge issue? I'm not jumping into the argument about who should have what for attendance, and trust me I've been through some mighty lean years with Creighton, but attendance is a big thing. Let me explain why:

17,500 * $25 (avg. price of a ticket) = $437,500

$437,500 * 18 home games = $7,875,000

[GumbyDamnit!]

I don't think attendance is a huge issue, it would look nice on TV to see all the big east games sold out, but not all that important.

The one thing that concerns me, is how will attendance be for the conference tournament? I think that is very important, and with a lot of the big attendance drawing schools out, how will that affect attendance?

How is attendance NOT a huge issue? I'm not jumping into the argument about who should have what for attendance, and trust me I've been through some mighty lean years with Creighton, but attendance is a big thing. Let me explain why:

17,500 * $25 (avg. price of a ticket) = $437,500

$437,500 * 18 home games = $7,875,000

Too simplistic of a view... SJU avg ticket price might be $40. So selling 11K at MSG gets you more coin than 17,500 in Omaha. But it's relative. Do they get a piece of the concessions. What are they charged to use the facility? Is there advertising/signage money that SJU gets that CU doesn't at their respective arenas? etc., etc., etc.

Look all, the Jays are having the best season in the history of their program, which has been consistently picking up steam for the last 3 years. They have the best player who ever put on a Jays uniform, who will be a 3x AA. They just went from playing Bradley and Drake on some regional TV network to having every game on national TV. They get coverage on SportsCenter and FS1 and the Twitterverse, whereas last year the nation found out about them only in March. Omaha does not have other teams pulling eyes away from CU right now. In Philly we have the NBA, NHL, NFL, indoor lacrosse, Area football, MLS and 6 major Div. 1 BB programs. I would imagine that many Jays fans are pretty stoked to have Gtwn, and Xavier, Butler , Marq and Nova come to Omaha. Let's be frank, as a low mid-major things like that just didn't happen before this year. There is some novelty in having that occur for the first time. Add all of these things together and CU sells out. Congratulations! That's great! It's good for the conference and great for CU. Hopefully CU will continue to be a draw both in Omaha and when they go on the road so they can create some buzz wherever they play. SHU, PC, SJU and DePaul have all been down for years. Do you think that if SHU had a 3x AA, made the tourney a # of years straight and was expected to be a FF caliber team that they would not put more people in the seats? But other than the obvious, what is the point? I'm thinking JRoc is probably not even a Jays fan but someone on here just to stir the pot. FriarFan2, reincarnated perhaps?

[WaitingPatiently]

I don't think attendance is a huge issue, it would look nice on TV to see all the big east games sold out, but not all that important.

The one thing that concerns me, is how will attendance be for the conference tournament? I think that is very important, and with a lot of the big attendance drawing schools out, how will that affect attendance?

How is attendance NOT a huge issue? I'm not jumping into the argument about who should have what for attendance, and trust me I've been through some mighty lean years with Creighton, but attendance is a big thing. Let me explain why:

17,500 * $25 (avg. price of a ticket) = $437,500

$437,500 * 18 home games = $7,875,000

This math is questionable at best. The $25 avg would be close to accurate for single game tix. But the season tix in the upper bowl are closer to $12 avg for adult tickets and like $8 for youth tickets. So that $25 avg doesn't apply to roughly 70% of the upper bowl. The lower bowl tickets are in the neighborhood of that $25 avg, but also have a minimum donation attached that isn't part of that avg. You're also ignoring the rumored $80k per game in rental of the facitilites and the roughly 10% of concessions and parking that are 'rebated' back to the university. They are not collecting just under $8M on basketball tickets when said and done. Basketball may generate that or more, but not ticket sales.

[TrueBlueJay]

Wow - I was just making a point of why it matters to have large crowds. I'm sorry I made it about Creighton. I wasn't trying to do an itemization of all of the money Creighton brings in.

Maybe I should do it as Marquette:

15,000 * $25 = $375,000
$375,000 * 18 = $6,750,000

The point is large crowds bring in millions of dollars to the Universities. Yes I know there are other factors (required donations, concessions...) but I was just trying to refute the post from Jim Neutron who said that attendance is not a huge issue.

[Jim Neutron]

Who cares if you have great attendance if you don't win? Look at butler, back to back national title games, I wonder if they would have won those titles if they had bigger crowds? It is silly to judge teams based on attendance.

[TrueBlueJay]

Who cares if you have great attendance if you don't win? Look at butler, back to back national title games, I wonder if they would have won those titles if they had bigger crowds? It is silly to judge teams based on attendance.

My last post on this...I don't recall anyone judging a team based on their attendance, I know I didn't. I also think it is really laughable if you can't see that bringing in millions of dollars to your athletic department isn't a big deal.