For a minute I thought I was on the BA football forum. There has been talk there about flagging NFL attendance and earlier there was a thread dealing with declining CFB attendance. Perhaps, there is fan fatigue in the sports world in general. In part I think that this may be due to the over-saturation we now have with sports of all kinds on the many sports channels on our TVs and on the interwebs (as one old army grunt likes to put it).

There are many options and where sports was the prime driver for social interaction, there are now many. Sports was the community builder, whether in cities or small towns. Now it seems, unless your team is winning attendance really suffers.

Some of us are old enough to remember the 1970s Ohio high school basketball tournament. I was in grade school and fascinated by the dozens of local radio stations banners that were draped over their respective broadcasting tables at St. John Arena in Columbus. These stations would broadcast all of the state finals, whether a local team was in the game or not.

Even though the Columbus metro area is almost 2,000,000 people, Ohio State has trouble with attendance. I would throw out that one of the big reasons why is you can't tailgate, which leads us to football. Lots of big time college football programs have large tailgate parties for social interaction. A fair amount of the people tailgating might not even know who the opponent is and might not make it inside the stadium, even though the attend every tailgate. However, it is the place to be, so lots of people, especially young single people go. Some big time programs and especially professional programs have family sections so families can be shielded from drunken, profane fans, but that's a whole other topic.

Can we blame this on Kapernick as well? Because several believe that is the reason the NFL is declining.

Personally my belief is if you want to sit in premium seating you should pay premium pricing. Bobcat Black seats were empty today as well, and it's not fair to those who pay for those seats to have others who pay much less enjoy the game from the same view.

Flip side of that is....if you let people see what it looks like in the lower bowl they may be compelled or even excited to try and upgrade next year.

I saw in a box score today that there were 2143 attending and they were excited in game comments ...then I saw the arena sat 3k and change.

obc payment for four platinum tickets is $900 plus the ticket price of $1020 for a total of $1920. The family pak of four is a total of $130. That's almost 15 times as much for the platinum seats.

It blows my mind how so many on this board undervalue the importance of gameday atmosphere.

In an era where you can see almost any game on TV/internet, atmosphere is THE thing that is going to convince someone that being there is superior to watching from their couch. Even when we win... It is the atmosphere that comes with a winning team that gets people to show up.

Personally, I'm against letting people move down to the O Zone because one time as a student I went to a game over break and the non-students sitting down there complained when I was standing up in front of them... On the short-term vs long-term discussion, I still/have always believed the $ brought in from the black seats is not worth the sacrifice to gameday atmosphere. Do you want an extra $1000 today or do you want to invest in the future of the fanbase? Easy choice. This basketball program has stupidly high potential. Pennies today or many times more than that tomorrow? Easy choice.

And I get some people's claims of promoting a better game day experience, but how can you expect someone to lay out $2k when the guy sitting next to you paid $130?

Some here is a growing oversupply prices will drop, correct?

I have another solution...during breaks PLAY IN TOURNAMENTS. This is an old time model Ohio used to follow. Better competition at neutral sites. Face it, during break there are just not a lot of people in Athens or around the State that can get to a game in Athens in person for whatever reason. So, why play there in a basically empty Convo against a bunch of no names. Instead, go somewhere and let the kplayers have some fun, see a different place, and some better competition.

If you think the Convo was empty yesterday, just wait for the December 30th game against Urbana. Tuesday January 3rd won't be much better as Bobcat fans get used to Tuesday night MAC games as opposed to Wednesday night games and games going up against local high school basketball.

Pretty sure Platinum is sold out - so no "oversupply" exists - in Platinum seating anyway.

The only "oversupply" I experience is the number of miles I drive round trip to a game. Missed the last two due to issues/conflicts that made the 3 hr round trip drive unable to do - and I hardly Ever miss a game in the Convo. When I can I give my tics away if not able to attend - was not able to in time for these last two games.