Champion days were sparse... Jenkins was a slight improvement over current numbers. J’mar ranks somewhere close to the bottom as far as Qb performance, but he has produced some wins. So, win and they will come, or win in exciting fashion and they will come, or play a relevant opponent at home? What is the biggest influence on attendance?
Really? What HAVE you been watching the last 2 years? (Rhetorical question.)
One of the biggest influences on attendance is a team's ability to SCORE, which makes a game exciting, and under J'Mar we have statistically sucked at it. (See previous stats posted earlier in this thread). Another is, beating your rivals. And we've sucked at that as well. (e.g., Southern Miss). When you don't beat your rivals, ever, you discount your own program and make people think they are watching an inferior product.
A third influence related to "on the field performance" is, losing games you were heavily favored to win. E.g., WKU had a 2-9 record and beat us in JAS. Again, when a team loses games they were easily supposed to win, you're telling the public one of two things: 1) we don't care, and we can't wait for this season to be over, or 2) we truly ARE an inferior product. Either way, people figure if you don't care, why should they?
And I've already mentioned the value of a marquee win, as demonstrated by UNT's beat down of Arkansas. That has a big influence as well. But when LA Tech's only memorable play in our last 2 appearances against Mississippi State involved Tech losing 87 yards on a single play, well.......it's just really hard to remain credible to your fans when you do your very best to make an ass out of yourself and your school.
So from 2007-2010 the champion/Jenkins
07- 18564 5-7 five home games
08- 19022 9-5 six home games
09- 20000 4-8 five home games
10- 21667 6-7 seven home games
Smith
16- 20414 9-5 five home games Smith had 43 attempts all season
17- 20375 7-5 seven home games
18- 17524 8-5 five home games
So what this tells me is a few things right off the top. 1) most of the home games during Smith’s time have been in a weaker conference than the latter WAC years. 2.) Smiths most successful year at Tech has been the one he didn’t play much.
3.) and the most important I drove the 300 miles one way to watch the Champion/Jenkins teams and the 16 Higgins. In 17 and especially last year I have not driven to see more than a couple of games each season. Just 1 in 18, and none this coming year if Smith is the QB. This after going to almost every home game and several away games every year since 1982.
And we know attendance is tickets sold not always butts in seats, but there weren’t even 11,000 reported at the WKU game last year.
I understand your struggle. It would be hard for me to pass my 50th even as mad as I am at the AD, but I definitely wouldn’t give him a dime other than my ticket. I love my Dawgs, but I have zero faith in the QB and no desire to watch a trash offense. We averaged 24 points a game last year, our opponents averaged 23. Not exciting football, and our defense was good last year, but nothing amazing as a unit. That just shows you how bad some of the teams we played were offensively, and we lost to some of them.