It is great to see we are getting exposure and people like the product they see on the field/court. The key being those fans looked beyond just the W/L records or conference affiliation. Sadly too many people simply follow schools the sports media promotes. All we can do is keep plugging away and winning as often as possible.
Florida has a population of about 20 million. Louisiana has a population of about 4 million. We get about 20K to our home games. Thats 0.5 percent of the total population of Louisiana. That should translate to an attendance of over 100K for UCF, but they average about 35K. They have a student population of over 60K, while we have only 12K. So we do much better attendance wise than UCF. So they have three P5 schools to compete with (really only 2) and we have only one. We're doing something better than UCF.
Can't help but wonder if Florida sports media is like Louisiana and 97 per cent of coverage goes to FSU, UF, and Miami. Hard to get locals excited about your program when local/regional print, radio, and TV sports gives your program about as much attention as high schools. And practically every accomplishment is presented as second-rate.
That we are. And better than UNT (enrollment of 31,209 per US News Best Colleges https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/unt-3594.) But I do understand the earlier post about people not being able to attend the university of their choice.
I was in Boone, North Carolina on game day for them. It was amazing! The whole town was shut down. There were people tailgating miles, and I mean MILES from the stadium, set up in parking lots of businesses scattered up and down that boulevard that runs onto campus. I thought they were waiting on a parade, because it looked like a typical Mardi Gras parade turnout. I was there on business and early that morning we stopped at a McDonald's to grab breakfast. It was about 7am (Saturday morning...game time was 2PM that day vs. Georgia State). It was packed with Appy fans, including a dad with 4 kids, all decked out in their black and yellow garb.
I spoke to him briefly and he stated that being in the Belch was okay for starters, but they hope to move into a better conference some day.
Okay, you win. Yours is smaller than mine.
I do think you are splitting hairs now. By any reasonable measure, Hattiesburg is still deemed a very small college town. That's why USM is still in CUSA and not currently in the AAC. And USM's sports attendance has always been much better than LA Tech's.