2015 MVFC Attendance

[mmiller_34]

SDSU just finished their last home game of the season and in the situation if SDSU gets to host a playoff game it will be played in Sioux Falls at 10,000 seat Howard Wood Field.

After reading a few backhanded comments here and there about SDSU's attendance yesterday against Illinois State I will save this post and once I get to a computer I will calculate everyone's average attendance and post it here. All I know right now is SDSU ended the season averaging 12,899 fans per game. Our lowest game was 9,081 which was yesterday. To the ISU (r) fans who knocked this, let me remind you that last week against a ranked Indiana State opponent, you brought 7,498 to that game.

If if anyone wants to help calculate average attendance go ahead and help me out. I'll update this post. I will update these after each week until playoffs.

1. North Dakota State - 18,694
2. Youngstown State - 14,854
3. Northern Iowa - 13,079
4. South Dakota State - 12,899
5. Illinois State - 11,918
6. Missouri State - 10,036
7. South Dakota - 9,028
8. Southern Illinois - 7,750
9. Indiana State - 5,848
10. Western Illinois - 5,502

[clenz]

With 2 home games left

Total 52,316
Avg 13,079

[mmiller_34]

Alright, I just finished up. Surprised SIU and WIU numbers seemed so low.

[Sycamore62]

as long as our attendance is 1 I'm fine with that

[jackrabbit1979]

does that # for YSU really matter? Fabricated actual attendance numbers all day...

[clenz]

does that # for YSU really matter? Fabricated actual attendance numbers all day...

They are, far and away, the worst at it

A coupe years ago it was their homecoming and they hosted UNI...either 10 or 11, if have to look it up to be sure.... They announced 20k for attendance but there wasn't 3k the stadium counting officials, players and press

[ValleyTalk]

They are, far and away, the worst at it

A coupe years ago it was their homecoming and they hosted UNI...either 10 or 11, if have to look it up to be sure.... They announced 20k for attendance but there wasn't 3k the stadium counting officials, players and press

Talk about fabricating numbers....
http://www.ysusports.com/sports/fball/2010-11/files/game9.htm

Announced attendance: 13,039.... Definitely 20k Clenz xthumbsupx

[ST_Lawson]

Alright, I just finished up. Surprised SIU and WIU numbers seemed so low.

Regarding us, I'm not.

I'm pretty sure we used to be like some schools with the inflating numbers bit. If you look at our reported attendance averages for the past 15 or so years, 2001-2007 were all listed as averaging over 10k and a high point of 2003 where we had listed one game at 18,263 and another at 19,287. Now, we were doing really well then, having come off a 2002 season where we went 11-2 overall, went 1-1 in the playoffs, and were conference co-champs, and we were doing great so far that season, but still....19k+ in our stadium is having every seat filled as well as having a lot of people (~3k) sitting on the hillsides around the field. We could fit that many people there, but I don't think I've ever seen it other than back when the Rams were using us as summer training camp and had a scrimmage against the Bears at Hanson Field.

The last few years, though, I think have been more accurate. I've seen games that in the mid-00s would have been reported back then as being somewhere around 8k-10k but actually end up being listed in the 5k-6k range. By that adjustment, I'm not sure I've ever actually seen more than about 15k-16k in our stadium at the absolute most, when we were at our best.

The last few years have been really bad attendance-wise anyway. I mean, it seems like a lot of schools are struggling with it, but being in a small town so far from our alumni base with some pretty apathetic students....it's tough.

Our attendance numbers over the last two seasons were 5,525 and 4,525. This year, we're sitting at 5,504 for an average, but that will go down after our last home game (first weekend of thanksgiving break...all the students go home...3-4 hours away). If we can at least pull 609 people, we'll still beat our average from last year...not that that's saying much. We'll probably get more than that for the last game, but I can tell you that it'll feel like maybe 200 including the band.

A while back, some of us were looking at "attendance outliers" (http://www.anygivensaturday.com/showthread.php?176555-Attendance-outliers&p=2275199&viewfull=1#post2275199) and we figured out the most "rural" and most "urban" schools in the FCS (based off 20 mile population ring from campus. In the ones with fewest population, there's 3 conference teams. #2 is USD, #4 is SDSU, and #8 is WIU. All three schools have fewer than 45k people within 20 miles of them. What that means for a school is that very few people at the school are from the nearby area. When they "go home" for the weekend, it's not close, and when they graduate, they move away to find jobs. Very few alumni stay in the area. Last year, 28% of our students were from Cook County (Chicago) and if you include the Chicago suburb counties, that number jumps to 50%. So...50% of our students are from 3-4 hours away from Macomb. For comparison, if you add up the numbers for all counties within about an hour's drive of Macomb...that's just under 20% of our students.

The other thing is that in Illinois, if you were to rank all the football teams at all levels, we're maybe the 6th or 7th best football team in the state (Bears, Northwestern, Illinois, Northern Illinois, Illinois State, then EIU/SIU/WIU). In South Dakota, you have SDSU at #1, USD #2, and then you're into Div. II or III schools. I realize that they're close enough to other states to have to compete for attention against schools like Nebraska and Minnesota, but still, when people in Illinois think of college football...Western is nowhere near the top of their list unfortunately. And unless we start winning more games and competing near the top of the FCS, that's unlikely to change any time soon.

[Twentysix]

does that # for YSU really matter? Fabricated actual attendance numbers all day...

YSU is the ORU of the MVFC.

#SummitMVFCjokes

We love you anyway :p

[wow]

They are, far and away, the worst at it

A coupe years ago it was their homecoming and they hosted UNI...either 10 or 11, if have to look it up to be sure.... They announced 20k for attendance but there wasn't 3k the stadium counting officials, players and press

Missouri State might be worse. Average of over 11K this year? OK...

[clenz]

Missouri State might be worse. Average of over 11K this year? OK...
This year I might agree...

From the SDSU game last weekend - the middle section is for the band

http://s3media.247sports.com/Uploads/Assets/109/986/3986109.jpg

[mmiller_34]

Missouri State might be worse. Average of over 11K this year? OK...

Yeah, of course when I was doing their averages. They have had four home games and something like this:

1st game: 17,000
2nd game: 9,000
3rd game; 14,000 -- homecoming I suspect
4th game: 3,000 -- SDSU game (pictured above)

[JayJ79]

I hope UNI is doing its best in practice this week to accustom itself to the crowd noise it will face this Saturday in Springfield

[CappinHard]

I hope UNI is doing its best in practice this week to accustom itself to the crowd noise it will face this Saturday in Springfield

Maybe pipe in some crickets over the speakers, that'll really help simulate the game day atmosphere.

[ST_Lawson]

Maybe pipe in some crickets over the speakers, that'll really help simulate the game day atmosphere.

And maybe make sure nobody is sitting in any seats in the dome....gotta get used to that echo bouncing back when calling out plays.

[clenz]

Maybe pipe in some crickets over the speakers, that'll really help simulate the game day atmosphere.
The dome's ambient noise is probably greater than we'll face in Springfield

[wow]

The dome's ambient noise is probably greater than we'll face in Springfield

Their cannon has to be the loudest in the nation though. My buddy about crapped his pants when it went off the first time.

[clenz]

Their cannon has to be the loudest in the nation though. My buddy about crapped his pants when it went off the first time.
You're assuming they'll have a reason to fire against UNI's defense...

[CappinHard]

You're assuming they'll have a reason to fire against UNI's defense...

They didn't against SDSU's, I assume UNI will be the same story.

[ysubigred]

does that # for YSU really matter? Fabricated actual attendance numbers all day...

?? I was at the ISU (r) game in Y-town and 15K was about right xcoffeex The two front loaded weenie games YSU played were in really bad weather so fabricated #'s probably xdrunkyx

[JayJ79]

You're assuming they'll have a reason to fire against UNI's defense...

some schools fire it off with the opening kickoff. dunno if that is the case with MSU or not

[wow]

some schools fire it off with the opening kickoff. dunno if that is the case with MSU or not

In SDSU's shutout they fired it before the game (I was standing outside the stadium at the time), at opening kickoff, and at the second half kickoff.

[Panther-State]

Talk about fabricating numbers....
http://www.ysusports.com/sports/fball/2010-11/files/game9.htm

Announced attendance: 13,039.... Definitely 20k Clenz xthumbsupx

Still about 10K short though