I would have liked to have seen the corn with the colored husky head at midfield.

That said, I bet it will be either the outlined husky or colored husky at midfield that is chosen.

I like the third one best, personally. You have to give the NIU promotion staff credit for drumming interest in the the things they are doing. With their promotions, and the quality of their teams, it's hard for me to grasp why their attendance keeps falling.

I would bet money the winner will be one of the options with the state outline, they really want to drive home the idea that they are the best FBS team in the state.

I wonder how many of those teams the typical NIU fan would consider a rival. Also 4:00 games are the worst in my opinion. Sure for the those who really like to tailgate, it makes for a long tailgate experience but for those who don't it just busts up the whole day.

IF the fans are suddenly being selective, and they will only go to see particular rivals, that would be a major problem for any program, and would spell doom for attendance. I do agree, though, Alan, that with attendance dropping, they ought to try some different start times, and see if that helps. My favorite has always been a 1PM start, which puts the entire game in bright daylight, and leaves the evening free for post-game activities.

Clearly they are trying a lot to drum up support. They had the schedule reveal thing going on before, and now they have the field reveal drama.

Getting back to the "traditional rival" angle, they probably should skip the game with Presbyterian, though. Their FCS games have usually been their highest attendance for the year, probably in part because the game is early, when the weather is nice, but partly because of their choices in FCS opponents. When they play E. Illinois, S. Illinois, W. Illinois, or Illinois State, it's always been a well attended game.

Back to the field reveal, there is an online poll where people can vote on the field choice:
https://polldaddy.com/poll/8884403/

So far two designs have been eliminated, one of which is the leader by far in the poll, with 50% of the votes, the outline of the husky. The designs with the state outline have 13%, 4%, and 4% of the vote respectively, compared to 50% for the Husky outline and 26% for the Husky.

Indeed. It's certainly something that should be studied and understood because you wouldn't want to to happen here. I definitely don't understand it, and it is completely contradictory to what I would have expected.

I think that the place I'd start would be by separating student attendance from paid attendance, because I suspect that they may not be trending the same way. One might be flat, and the other falling, for example. I'd probably also do as you suggest, and check to see if ticket price changes have impacted paid attendance, or if the ticket promotions or marketing approaches have changed.

As for attendance there are a few reasons, though they don't entirely explain it.

It rained for the Presbyterian game, pretty much the whole game. That was also a Thursday game (6 or 7 pm) so try to get people from Chicago or nearby suburbs to go to a game against Presbyterian in the rain.

The Toledo game was pretty cold, being in mid-November and as usual, at night. And of course it's always windy in DeKalb. It was still a very depressing attendance number for a big game like that.

The other 3 home games were 3 weeks in a row with Homecoming for the middle week. I think people that went to homecoming didn't also want to go the week before and the week after.

We've had a horrific home OOC schedule for a decade. Every other year, at least, we'd have 5 home games with the only OOC home game being against FCS. Okay if an in-state school, but otherwise it's really poor. The new AD is fixing that. They also set aside the East parking lot (or much of it) for donors. That meant that half the field, sometimes more, was empty, when it used to be full of tailgating students, which added atmosphere to the event and made it seem like the place to be.

Starting in 2003 when we upset ranked Maryland at home, then beat Alabama on the road and Iowa State at home, the crowds were great. That lasted through 2005 and even somewhat 2006. 2007 was a terrible year and I think the economy hurt a lot after that. Ticket prices went up for most seats but you can still sit in the corner for $25. And there are no endzone seats (except for a few "premium" seats in one endzone) so all the seats still have a pretty good view.

Having said all that, it's still hard to believe we can't get more people to the games, but I guess more are watching the game on TV. Years ago we hardly had any games on TV.

I have to disagree. When your logo is these 4 letters - OHIO - you don't need a squiggly shape (that not everyone recognizes unfortunately) to drive home brand identity. From a branding perspective you can't get any better than the word OHIO- its short, its concise, it's aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and it says everything you want the reader to know about your brand. Why do you think Ohio State was so desperate to cop it?

The winning design was the state, with a red dot for DeKalb. That was the third favorite in the poll.

Yes, Alan, the outcome was predetermined. But it was likely the winning design among those who made the choice.

As for the attendance discussion here, NIU is having the same problem most other schools are having. College football attendance was down again last year (about 8% as I recall), even at some of the big schools with winning records. There are probably lots of reasons, but I think the big three are (1) the economy still hasn't fully recovered from The Big Downturn, so a lot of people don't have as much disposable income as they did a few years ago (that's the main reason I haven't made many trips to Athens the past few years); (2) damn near every game is now on TV/Internet, so it's easier to catch the game elsewhere than the stadium; and (3) football in general has gotten a lot of bad press recently with concussions/neck injuries and off-field crap. I think the last issue may be the biggest to overcome. The injuries are making really talented players look to other sports for schollie opportunities, and the injuries often keep marquee players off the field for big chunks of the season. And if you have players who are arrested, investigated and sued for their off-field behavior but they still wind up winning the Heisman and being a first-round NFL pick, that puts a deep stain on the entire sport, whether it happens at your school or not. College football has an integrity problem, which only seems to get worse every year. The NCAA really needs to clean up its act, but unfortunately the money schools won't let it happen because they don't want the interference from the NCAA.

Now that I've vented, I'm going to bed.

I'll disagree here because I think using the shape of the state expands the logo's appeal a little bit outside the group of people who are grads/fans of Ohio University to a group that could include Ohio residents.