I'm watching the Western KY-UK game on ESPNU.  It's a "home" game for WKU, but it's played in the Tennessee Titans' stadium in Nashville -- one hour from WKU and 2 1/2 hours from Lexington.  They're in a 68,000 seat stadium that's maybe half full (they may come up with higher numbers, but the upper two decks are very sparsely populated; I'm sure that a lot of fans were moved to the lower bowl to make it look fuller for TV).  Granted, it is a Thursday night and both teams are coming off losing records (UK 6-7; WKU 2-10).  But it's gotta be disappointing for the schools to not have a better showing.  UK's home stadium seats 67,000, so they've got to be thinking they'd been better off at home.

We've had discussions about playing "home" games against Big 6 schools at neutral sites, such as Cincy, Cleveland or Pittsburgh).  Rule 1, though, is stay away from midweek games.  Rule 2: If you play in an NFL stadium, don't play at the same time the NFL team is playing.  The Titans are playing at NO right now, so there's got to be a lot of potential attendees sitting at home watching them.

WKU is fairly close to Nashville and draws some students from that area.  I suspect that was part of the thinking of the WKU people in setting this up.  In any Kentucky city they would be a higher ratio of UK fans. 

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
Even the bigger schools are going this route especially if school hasn't opened yet. Check out Sat. nite game at the Jones Palace in Big D.




GO BOBCATS

When I lived in Nashville, I was unaware of any such support. Support for Vandy, yes, Suport for UT, yes. There was even some support for MTSU, but I never heard anything about WKU.

Well, when I lived in Murray, Ky., the home of the "real western Kentucky university," we were aware of the recruiting area for both schools, and both MSU and WKU drew some students from the bordering areas of Tennessee, and Nashville was the largest population center in the area.