Observations:

"Without looking at actual numbers, I'd be willing to bet that for all but somewhere between 1 and 3 seasons, Ohio has led the MAC both in butts in seats, as well as tickets counted, for the last 25 years. That, by the way, is one of the more frustrating things about this program not managing to have consistently better results compared to Akron, Kent, UB, Toledo, etc. At least to me."

Agree OU_Country. Those four MAC schools you mentioned above have been better than Ohio the past 20 plus seasons regular season wise. The Bobcats have struck gold a few years when they got hot for three games in the league tourney. Ohio has the premier basketball facility in the league and leads the league in attendance. Ohio is at the top of the MAC when it comes to compensating the basketball coach. Ohio University puts a priority on basketball, yet it is the teams you mentioned above that are performing better than the Bobcats. The same can't be said for Peden Stadium. Peden Stadium is not the premier facility in the league. Yet some Bobcat Attackers complain that Coach Albin shouldn't get a raise or an extension on his contract after winning 10 games, the MAC East and having the best MAC regular season record in the league. It could be that basketball fans are not frustrated about the results you mentioned above, because the first 30 games don't matter in basketball.

At the risk of sounding fixated on attendance, the MAC has had some of its better crowds the last 2 weekends. It might be a trend or it could be just having the stars aligned in the night sky, but reported attendances included:

8322 Saturday Miami at Ohio
5344 Saturday CMU at Toledo
6068 Friday EMU and Emoni Bates at Ball St. on national TV
5821 sellout Friday Kent at Akron on national TV
6922 99% capacity Jan. 28 BG at UT
5425 sellout Jan. 28 WMU at CMU


The WMU at CMU rivalry game had a wild comeback from the home team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjYq8C0H3bQ

If we just pay the coach 1M, attendance will skyrocket.

You're turning into someone...I just can't place it... but it's f***ing annoying.

While not great crowds compared to 1970s/80s/90s, recent attendance numbers continue to show improvement throughout the MAC. Two games Friday night (at Buffalo and Ohio) plus today at Miami, Ball St. and EMU all were around 5,000, give or take a couple hundred. For a long time, it might have taken 5 or 6 home games for Miami or EMU to get those type of numbers in the building.

With the nature of our fan base, Friday night games aren't optimal. This woukd have been 6500-7000 on Saturday.

And, don't forget the 5,000 members of Larry Hunter's extended family who have never came back after he was fired! 

Students are theoretically counted in the U.S. Census, but in actuality huge numbers of students at both OHIO and Hocking are missed. So, there's an undercount problem. Probably you can add about 10,000 to the reported count to get an accurate estimate.

In many cases OU students are counted in that total. It all depends on how they or their parents fill out the census forms which were a mess in 2020 (I was an enumerator and saw first hand how challenging it was to get an accurate count much less determine where folks were living). As a side note, that's one reason Athens is often labeled as the poorest county in the state. When a student is counted locally and their "income" is reported, it drives our income numbers down. Don't get my wrong, Athens is on the low end of the socio-economic continuum in Ohio but student counts have an effect on that.

Don't have to be an ass all the time.

Please tell us more about that new 45,000-seat football stadium!

This Friday was a senior night game for several high schools in the area and, as 69 pointed out, that affected the crowd total, translating to empty seats in the camera view. Just sayin'.