http://www.hustlebelt.com/2015/2/10/8014293/tinder-night-...

I like this move by Toledo. All schools need to use social media more. Attendance is going down at almost every MAC school but OHIO. But we seem to have peaked. 2012 - 6177, 2013 - 6932, 2014 - 6124, so far in 2015 - 6509. Keeping with the newest trends is a great way to get a bigger student turnout.

Of course we peaked in attendance in 2013. It was the season following the Sweet 16 run, and was bound to happen.


I agree that MAC Athletic Departments probably need to engage students, and the public more. Without knowing specifically what schools do for generating attendance, I can't comment too much on how to use specific methods to get people to games.

I will comment something that I found rather interesting that a couple weeks ago before the Buffalo home game. I was asked by two bar tenders in Jackie O's the "Oh, is there a basketball game today?" type of question. I would think that getting the news of home games out in bars, and also having a local spot that is routinely the game watch party spot for EVERY road game wouldn't hurt any school in the MAC, including Ohio.

The Hawks did it a few weeks back and it was a success.

Buffalo rented 4 buses to take students to Akron for their game, I'd like to see more schools follow suit. Knowing that bus loads of away fans are coming my spur more home fans to come out and show support as well. Apparently Buffalo's students showed up the AK Rowdies in their own house, how embarrassing.

EMU had 460 on hand last night. How fun would it be to bus 1000 students up to Ypsi and just take over the place?

I'm not suggesting it should be the sports savviest bar. I'm suggesting that the promotions folks should be making so that they at least are aware that the game is taking place. It's about changing the culture so that people at least know it's an option. If Jackie O's can tweet about O$U's National Title, they'll at least take interest in sports locally if people let them know about it.

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/1/7/7511053/scenes-fr...

I think our athletic department stops short of doing "zany" things to get people to games. It's just not the style of the current admin. But we'll get 2x the number of students in the house giving away Chick-fil-A, hats or whatever than what Toledo draws for this I'm sure.

CatsEye is the place to go for Bobcat sports savvyness, if that's not a word it should be. We've talked about it plenty here before, but it drives me crazy that more local bars know when o$u football and ball games are on than OUr games. I watch a fair number of big games at BW3s and here's a true story: I was encouraging a manager there one night to make the place more of a Bobcat sports bar and he was telling me that they had done a lot and even been recognized at half time of a football game. He pulled down a football in a plastic box that he said was given to them for their support and said the team had signed it. I took a look and said "well not the team, but Frank Solich signed it." And he said "Oh. Who's Frank Solich?" True story. Sad, sad, sad.