Halftime Retention

[Frenchie35]

Yep. And this isn't just a UL issue. It's been well documented that many other schools/teams are seeing lower attendance and are making drastic changes to the game day exp. A lot of us on this board may not even recognize a college football game day experience in another 10 years

I will be looking down, well I hope looking down, in ten years and saying, "where was all this new experience and entertainment when I was around and attending games..

[RaginCajun77]

As a student I stayed the entire game. That's just how I was wired. If you're a student today and you look at the home side, how many empty prime seats do you see? We hold the students to a higher standard than our alumni and those who buy season tickets but rarely show up.

Fact is we played an FCS opponent last night that nearly beat us. Once again a new season started and the team that took the field wasn't prepared to play football. Students, fans, and alumni recognized it. Students will make a move, they have the option to go to bars and night clubs on a Saturday night and have fun drinking, dancing, etc.

[USLJim]

Doc, it's simple. They can shoot fireworks and have gourmet nachos, ...

Until we start playing and BEATING upper tier CFB teams, there will always be an attendance problem. Real fans of the game don't care about the ancillary crap at games. We want to see good football and we want to see wins. We want to be relevant, and compete with the best. That's the real draw; that's what made major college football so appealing. Not nachos and fireworks.

Absolutely agree, until we start playing competitive FB with upper Tiers, we will always be a mediocre program

Geaux Cajuns

[CajunDreDog]

What do you guys think of the new fan experience? I was disappointed about not being able to find Deanos pizza and still crappie nachos.

Where did you look for nachos? I saw someone a few rows in front of me with what looked like seafood nachos. I think those are only sold on the west side downstairs, but they looked great.

[ULGrad@HOU]

Doc, it's simple. They can shoot fireworks and have gourmet nachos, ...

Until we start playing and BEATING upper tier CFB teams, there will always be an attendance problem. Real fans of the game don't care about the ancillary crap at games. We want to see good football and we want to see wins. We want to be relevant, and compete with the best. That's the real draw; that's what made major college football so appealing. Not nachos and fireworks.

Very True.

[DocCajun]

I will be looking down, well I hope looking down, in ten years and saying, "where was all this new experience and entertainment when I was around and attending games..

Amen my friend!

[Cajunsmike]

The game was not something we expected. But we won. What I saw at the half with the score 35-35 was 3/4 of the students left. Now that's something that the Administration should see into. Why is the question. I have a grandchild at UL and she sits on the student side. Loves football and attends every game. She is the one that brought the matter up to me. "Hey Pop, did you notice all the students that left at halftime"? This subject has been brought up many time and no one has the answer. Maybe this university is not a football school and you can't reverse that.

Had the team played better, most students still would have left. Today's students care very little about athletics. It matters little to them what the outcome is. They only go initially for social purposes. It is now that way at most schools that are not part of the P5. Granted it may be worst here. I will repeat a key point. They would have left regardless of how thw team was performing.

[California Cajun]

Yeah, your comments remind me of the Auggie days (sure wish I could recall that OC's name) where we'd lose a game 48 to 45 but most fans left happy because of the fireworks on the field.

Carl Smith?

[ManAboutTown]

Had the team played better, most students still would have left. Today's students care very little about athletics. It matters little to them what the outcome is. They only go initially for social purposes. It is now that way at most schools that are not part of the P5. Granted it may be worst here. I will repeat a key point. They would have left regardless of how thw team was performing.

No Mike, we have cultivated a community of people that care more about the social experience than watching the game. Lubbock, College Park, Boise, Baylor, etc all had apethrtic fan bases until their teams became successful, played house hold names, and eventually got into better conferences. Western Michigan took 40k fans to their NY6 bowl game against Wisconsin. You think they've been packing the stadium at WMU all these years? Of course not.

It will take multiple years of winning big to cultivate a passionate fan base. Not passionate for tailgating, but genuinely interested in going into the game and watching a football game.

[California Cajun]

I saw a few minutes of Texas vs. Maryland on TV from Austin, which I didn't think was very good, and there was a large crowd and student interest. It seemed like a parallel situation to ours except that Texas has a lot of past success. It's like the students are hard-wired to be there whether the team is good or not.