I actually made that comment in another thread. It's possible, I guess?

I'll throw an observation out on that and then recuse myself from the thread.

You know how people say "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" - ? It's that way geographically with entertainment. While a city like Nashville has exploded with places to go and things to do in the last 20 years (two major league sports teams, countless trendy restaurants/bars in neighborhoods that are now "cool" you wouldn't have gone to after dark back then, way more music venues for all genres of acts, etc.etc.) - social media and video games might be the only "new" options in a town/area that is not booming. Thus "going out" somewhere might not seem so worth is.

When young recent grads from midwest college towns move to Nashville, I can assure you that they go out ALL THE TIME. They go to Titans games (even if it's mostly for the tailgate partying), they go to Preds hockey which is next to an epic five block long strip of bars. Which has a new downtown amphitheater at the other end of it. Ask any Uber/Lyft driver in Nashville about the non-stop social life of the recently arrived recent grads.

So, some of the people not wanting to leave the dorm/apartment in Athens is just part and parcel of the geography and makeup of the area. It just is what it is.

Saul is such a damn asset. He is so personable, so compelling and very nice.

He needs to get uptown, walk the bars with the players early in evenings, go to sorority and fraternity events, meet with clubs.

I just don't think that Athletics really works it.

Do we know for sure this isn't happening? Saul seems like the kind of guy that would do this. Even with the sparse crowd yesterday, he still took the team up through the student section to thank folks who did show up for coming.

Saul has taken the team on campus tours to the various cafeterias every year to drum up support.

Thanks for posting. I just took a look at that video. I remember when we had her at a halftime of an OHIO game. That's the most amazing performance of "acrobatism" that I think I've ever seen. It was highly entertaining. I like the combination of Chinese music and the American red, white and blue outfit. E pluribus unum!

I really think you hit a portion of how I feel, on the head. SP seems like a great guy, likes Athens, and someone you want to see succeed. Nothing not to not like. But I almost feel there could potentially be a direct correlation to "Saul Ball," ticket sales/attendance decline, Ozone attendance decline and in my opinion, kind of overall lack of interest all of a sudden. I don't think it's not something a little winning/excitement won't cure, but I've sensed it for a little while.
Could be that he's only like 10-11 games over .500? Could be that we "may" enter year 5 of his contract with 0 Regular Season Championships, 0 MAC Final appearances and obviously that means 0 NCAA Tournament games and 0 wins. This feels like light years away from 2012 and it's actually only like 5-6 years ago. And yes, to your point--we seem to have always had "that marque guy" and unless JC becomes that, we don't. We've always had a Trent, Jeter, Jamerson, Hunter, Campbell, Tillman, Cooper--someone you'd invite a friend to the game to and they'd want to come see that guy they've been hearing about. When I see recruits announced and pull up their video footage, if much exists, I know pretty quickly a human highlight film isn't who we're getting but instead probably another stretch 4/5. I'm hoping that once MAC Action starts this changes, but if not, there may be more too it? But no doubt, I see a lack of attendance all around and sense a lack of energy and fan apathy.

I'm not so sure, I actually think Shabs may have hit one of the potential reasons on the head. I am a casual hoops fan who doesn't fully understand the deep X's/O's of modern hoops, and granted, I am far more engaged in OHIO ICA than the average student, and I openly admit that Saulball isn't a compelling product for me. You can't tell me that out of a student body of 20+k students on campus, you don't have a volume of enough former high school men and women that played hoops, were on spirit squads or were regular supporters of their high school teams, not to mention professional fans (in Lebron James/Cavs country) who wouldn't want to attend a compelling product in person with a premier seat location like the bleachers without having to pay for a ticket at the door.

I have had detailed conversations with knowledgeable hoops posters on this board, and members of the athletic department, and I still am yet to have someone explain to me why what turns me off about our present state of the program is simply due to me being a novice/don't know better/should just accept that the game is too erudite for me. And this is coming from a guy who planned a week long trip around the Charleston Classic.

We are in year four of the new program, and I like Saul A LOT as a person. He is a great father with a great family, they love Athens and OHIO, and his story during the NDSU run was certainly "one shining moment". However, for a head coach who is paid at the top of MAC, a program that outspends all of its MAC peers in Hoops budget and clearly has the best facility in the Conference, I simply no longer find OHIO hoops a must watch. Since the Iona game, which I found to be a pretty lame last 30 minutes, I haven't caught any of the games on live streaming, and I'm not sure if I'll be back in that frame of mind the remainder of the season except when it conveniently fits my schedule.

To win in the Saul system, you better be able to outwork/communicate the opponent for 40 minutes, be significantly more successful in shooting percentage from the floor and line than your opponents, highly value every offensive possession and limit opponent's offensive second chances. However, as was evidenced in the first halves against ISU and Dayton, this team is often completely unfocused, does not communicate well with one another and is completely hot and cold in shooting. And if as a program you plan not to "employ" bulk and athleticism in the roster in lieu of finesse players that will outwork the competition, and perform as we do for considerable stretches, we are going to have some nights where we are completely out to lunch, get obliterated on the boards (particularly in allowing offensive rebounds), shoot sub 45%/80% and get beaten by teams that we wouldn't have previously, often in our own house.

There used to be a time when we were a very tough out in our own house, and that hasn't been the case the last couple of years. I simply just won't make the product "must watch live", where I used to never miss a webcast. I don't want us to fail by any means, I hope this system can work eventually, but in year four, with almost exclusively "his" own roster, I really hoped we would be much farther along now than we are, especially considering our investment versus our peers.

Conversely, if I were a donor or a student of UB, and I knew I would be watching the athleticism of the Bulls night in, night out, I would be tuned in or attending live every night, because those guys can jump out of the gym and they play a very aggressive, physical style, which I find very entertaining.

And I'll play this back to our recent past, where OHIO hoops was "must see live" for me. During Groce's era, that guy was on the razor's edge every night. There were nights early in his regime when we got run out of our own gym, but that guy was freaking passionate every night, and you could always rely on the entertainment of foot stomps, skier face, table punches...that guy left it on the floor every night. I found that exponentially more compelling than Saul's style, which is more moderated and nuanced. Again, I like Saul a lot, very nice guy and funny/humble, but stylistically, sometimes he is just too laissez faire to get me sucked into his program.

Now if Saul were able to build a team to succeed in the system he is employing, and the team members are bringing the same intensity that the Bo Ryan era Wisconsin teams did, who REALLY outworked their opponents for 40 minutes and shot the rock the way many of those teams did, I'd be back in, night in, night out. I like many of our players, I just am not seeing a 10 deep bench that is going to be able to deliver against the promise of this style that can beat teams that are built like the Buffalo's of this conference, not to mention other mid major peers. We are top third percentile in D1 budget, but I'm not feeling this core as being able to deliver to our level of spend.

So despite how "novice" the student body is on hoops, if the games are not an event where we have a high probability of protecting our home floor, I wouldn't undersell Shabamon's premise that people aren't finding the product compelling.

These damn kids today.....

Anyway, we are not alone:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/story/sports/college/memp... /

Also, Duke is able to sell undergrad tickets to grad students and others. Duke! Earlier in the year Kentucky had fairly empty student sections.

Guess I just gotta get used to it....

What about the death of the print addition of The Post? Could that explain the student attendance drop?

We all know that far too many students aren't as interested in live sports as many of us once were. However, I think we have to study another component. How many of our current Bobcat students came from high schools were there was a lively student body present for basketball games?

Years ago when coming home from work and listening to the Fan sports show in Columbus (when Kirk Herbstreit was still an afternoon host.) Believe it not, he gave our Bobcat fans some love. Herbstreit went on to chide the lackluster Buckeye student body by telling them to go to Dayton and watch the lively fans at Dayton's Catholic high schools, Chaminade-Julienne, Alter and Carrol. He also mentioned his alma mater the big suburban public school south of Dayton, Centerville.

I am not sure if our demographics have changed much since I was a student in the 80s, but my guess is that fewer high schools have rabid cheering sections as they once did. Unless you are a big time programs in the national spotlight, a lot of bandwagon fans just don't show up, because in their mind they have better things to do. Even in the 80s when the Crazy Cats were on a roll, I can remember coming back from the Convo to celebrate in one of our many festive watering holes only to find some students perched in a booth, bar stool or some standing location asking how they game went because they were too busy watching North Carolina or Duke. Even in those days it could have better but now because of increased competition from many sectors, it is far worse.

https://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/student-paper-to-r...