Normally these threads are sad.  This one should not be.

We have a perfect storm brewing... I'm taking 100 foot waves (I am a terrible swimmer).  Football is great so that carryover effect that is always mentioned will be stronger than ever.  We are currently ranked #25, and we return EVERYONE from a Sweet 16 team.  Even for haters of mid-majors, I really think it is unlikely for us to be unranked.  In fact, I think we see a jump into the teens to start the season.  With the way our schedule sets up, we could get dangerously high in the rankings as the season progresses. I am sure pollsters will knock us especially hard for bad losses, but those may not come until after we climb very very high in the polls (hopefully they don't come at all).  If we can get wins against Memphis and Richmond... Wow...  The soft scheduling may not bode great for attendance, but football has shown us what winning does.  We also have that switch to semesters that has long been talked about as helping attendance.  I haven't looked at how our games set up (Saturday, Sunday, weekday) other than the opener and Richmond.  The opener should be beyond electric on a Saturday with no Ohio football and the Richmond game should be as well.  Those two games could be sellouts, and I am not talking tickets sold.  Our average attendance figures and total attendance figures this year will outnumber multiple MAC schools combined.  We are going to outnumber respected major programs.

Talk me down.  It is a good time to be an optimist.

Have to agree.  It's been too long since those final rankings have come out and the big boys will have reloaded and made waves in the press.  It could happen soon enough though as long as we grind out wins and knock off Memphis and Oklahoma!

That is too bad, still should be good as you said.  I always assumed Thanksgiving was the last Thursday in November as opposed to the 4th Thursday in November.

I just saw the commercial promoting all those $1-$10 tickets.  While I can understand the desire to sell the place out, why make these tickets so cheap?  Maybe it's just me personally, but I figured we would be able to get pretty close to capacity without having to give away tickets.  It would be a bad analogy to compare this game to the NMSU football game since we had the benefit of the Penn State win, but there should already be a significant amount of buzz for this one (Sweet 16 appearance, same team returning, ridiculously successful MAC coach taking the reins)

Perhaps also the buzz for basketball is not at height yet, the tourney having been 7 months ago and this being the heart of football season.


No swagger; just a quiet confidence and determination to prove that last season was only the beginning.  Do it right on the floor.

The most single most important factor to how big attendance figures in the Convo are, and always will be - students. And students get in free. $1 tickets for anybody and everybody - and the place does not fill up w/out at least 3 to 4 thousand (maybe more) students. 

???? Who said they wouldn't? It still takes a lot of $1 ticket paying non students to fill the Convo.

How many times has it actually Ever "Sold Out"?

I was not attempting to point fingers.. Just saying I expect student attendance to reach "next level" status this year.

Agree w/both above - students will reach "next level" this year - FBall success continues a good "Big Mo" going forward into the winter.

Certainly don't need another "Bobby Mo" lapse.............could be a buzz kill

ANorris: What was the crowd size of the 1974 BG Game?  It was the biggest in my years on campus.  Bill Brown, Walter Luckett,  George Green, Craig Love, Ullas Paine and Larry Slappy, and my personal favorite, Denny Reisch (sorry for the name misspelling of names)

Can't tell you off hand -- those numbers came from the 2011-2012 media guide, with last years' Miami attendance from the box score. Only other number in the guide was 12,824 vs. Miami in 1994.

Finding those figures back more than about 5-8 years can be quite tough.

I keep thinking things would change quicker - but - where were they today?

I thought the student crowd today wasn't bad at all for a noon game. Frankly, I expected much worse.

Noon kick-offs do not mesh with the Athens/OU culture. As we've discussed before, the same applies to the Sunday basketball games. Just a bad time to have a game at a school known for what happens on Friday and Saturday night.