I know that weeknite games for the MAC are supposedly for the TV money. But doesn't the image of your school and the MAC overall enter into it? The crowd at the game looked like there was a high school football game being played there by two Division 5 schools. Seriously.

If I were a high school football player being recruited by Miami, or any MAC school, I would certainly go away from watching the game on TV as extremely unimpressed by the league. Go to a MAC school and play in front of a smaller crowd than you did in high school? So what about playing on TV? It certainly would be no big deal for me if the games are on TV but there are only 2000 people in the stands.

As for Miami and all MAC schools in general, including Ohio, if I were a regular high school student looking at colleges to attend and the college experience being a factor in my decision, the prospect of going to football games with miniscule crowds would turn me away from MAC schools.

The worst thing was that this was an important game for the home team. In the past, you could claim that the weeknight TV game was being played at, say, last-place Akron and that was why nobody was at the game. But this was the biggest game for Miami in years. A win gives then a tie for the division championship and a likely bowl bid. Yet nobody on campus cared, nor did any Miami fans within driving distance - which includes the major league cities of Cincinnati and Columbus, as well as the large city of Dayton.

You want to be on TV to market your school. But to market your school you want to put your best foot forward. It is not good to present yourself around the country in such a weak image regardless of whatever money you bring in from the TV rights.

Looking at it from solely a money thing, would the take from the TV money tonight still outweigh the income Miami would have gotten if this game were instead played on Saturday afternoon with a normal or above-normal crowd in attendance?

The image bashing that comes from games like these don't just hurt the participating schools, but reflect on the entire league, too, and thus tonight's game was a huge minus for Ohio's image, too.

The problem is most MAC schools are residential campuses and kids come from afar to attend for college experience first and not athletics. Their alumni aren't concentrated nearby like they are with a school like South Alabama. MAC schools rely a lot on homecoming or parents weekends to get distant fans back to a game once a year. The culture is different in MAC country. Football is not religion like it is in the South where all students feel like they have to be at the game. I mean Big Ten schools draw well but those are very large schools mostly located in large college towns with the advantage of being the only league shown on TV in that part of the country for decades. They have like 400,000 to 500,000 alumni while MAC schools have usually around 150.000 alumni. The MAC is Mid-Sized schools in small towns in areas with heavy NFL and Big Ten compettion. The saving grace is that the MAC is D1 and that is enough to justify support by 25% of alumni and students. The immeadiate communites that supply workers to the school will get behind the MAC school as well. There is no state wide fanbases of supporters like you'll see with most BCS programs. It is what it is.   

Truer words have never been spoken and you are 100% correct! As I recall, we didn't have a huge turnout last year ourselves for the Temple game. It was the day after Thanksgiving and OU was on holiday break. Like Wes said, it is what it is for the MAC.

well said. the average fan watching TV understands that MAC games are usually in small towns, in cold weather, during the week day, at schools that support but aren't necessarily obsessed with athletics. What did the average viewer see on Sportscenter this morning, empty bleachers? Nope. Haywood's pregame speech followed by a 96yr TD run. Pretty cool.

Another thing to consider about MAC attendance in general is the high concentration of D1 football teams within the state of Ohio. Only Texas has more FBS teams than Ohio's 8. The average college football fan in Ohio has several teams within a 1-2 hour drive to chose from, whereas people in Wisconsin, for example, only have 1 choice in the whole state. As a result, the "casual fan" either gets sucked up by the monolith in Columbus, or is divided up among the other nearby schools. Getting 15K-20K fans out to a game in such a saturated market is a testament to how football crazed people in Ohio really are.

Week night football games suck. 

I get taunting texts from my buddies and family members who are Pac 10, Big 10, SEC and Big East alums about the non-existent crowds at MAC football games.  On the one hand, they are watching.  On the other, they are laughing at us.

This is something I've been thinking about for quite some time. 

When I chose to come to Ohio, it was because I was accepted into Scripps, and it was by far the obvious choice over Ohio State, who was going to make me go to a regional campus for my freshman year.  I grew up an avid OSU fan, so naturally, I actually considered giving up that first year in order to be a Buckeye in Columbus.  But I decided that Ohio would offer me a better education in my major (Journalism).

So when I decided that Athens would be my home, I knew NOTHING about Ohio athletics, and had never heard of Athens, Ohio before my junior year of high school.  But I figured it was my duty as a student to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could before I arrived on campus.  I perused this board, wikipedia, the athletics website, anything I could find, in order to prepare myself for my college athletics experience.  I even caught the GMAC bowl on TV and thought "SWEET!  That's where I'm going next year, we're going to be awesome!" (That was also the first time I heard the 110, and 3 years later, I can say marching with the 110 has been one of the greatest blessings of my life).

For the Gardner-Webb game in 2007, I didn't know who a lot of the players were, but I knew who the skill position guys were (McRae, Bower).  I was genuinely excited to finally get to see the team I had been researching and following for a few months.  Even though that season was somewhat a disappointment, it helped lay the foundation that I base my fandom on today.  I consider my time at OU a continual growing process, where I'm constantly learning new things about our teams, and growing more knowledgeable about our past.  

The point of all this is...how many kids come to a MAC school, or a C-USA school, or even a Atlantic-10 school with this mindset?  How many kids are genuinely excited about learning about the culture of their school, or the history of their athletic program?  Sure, it's a lot of information thrown at you at once, but I can attest that it's been unbelievably worthwhile to my experience as a student.  

Recently, I asked on my Facebook how many of my OU, non-110 friends knew who Dave Jamerson was (excluding those who I'm friends with who post on this board regularly).  Only one of them knew.  The others had to look up his name in Google.  

I guess I'm just wondering how many people had the same mindset as me, and the same experience I've had.  I've been blessed to have so many friends in the 110 who are as fired up about the Bobcats as I am, but not a lot of the others really care that much.  

I've got to say that even though these evening games and games on breaks produce poor turnout that personally I have enjoyed having those games on TV.  I watched games and saw NIU, Toledo, Temple, BG and Miami twice and of course the Cats vs Temple and enjoyed each and wouldn't have watched them or followed them during the week if they had been scheduled "normally".  

Same crowds Monroe, same crowds.

No more than we would.  Currently we are inflating basketball by roughly 80%