Were 16,723 sitting on one side of the field, not in camera view?  The box score listed attendance as 16,753 but there were only about 30 sitting on the side opposite from the TV cameras. 

ROTFL

We were at the game on Saturday and there is no way there were more that 7,000 people there.

My niece, who is a EMU student, said that EMU gives away "thousands" of tickets to youth sports programs in the metro Detroit area. 

Also, in an effort to boost student attendance, students (who get in free) can swipe their ID and get free t-shirts, hats, pizzas and the like.  We saw a lot of students come in the gate, swipe their ID and leave with their swag.
After we left the game, my niece had about 5 EMU t-shirts.


The weather could have been better, but all in all, a good trip and a Bobcat victory.

As much trouble as we have filling Peden and with the number of A&M fans in town, I've gotta think the problem is worse when your stadium and the Big House are in the same freakin' county.

One would have thought the fair food would have brought more people in.

The attendance requirements are not being enforced, for a variety of reason, perhaps the most important of which involves fear of anti-trust action against the NCAA.  Several years ago Congress put the NCAA on notice that they were being watched carefully.  Today, when I did a web search on this issue, I came up with links to several threads that supposedly discussed a whole new set of rules for FBS and FCS football that the NCAA was considering.  However, I couldn't read any of these threads because they were on "pay-for-view" sites to which I wasn't registered. Does anyone (JCW?) have any idea what these new proposed rules are?  The people who posted the links did say  specifically that attendance requirements were not included in these proposed new rules. 

EMU's program has certainly been a recent downer.  However, looking at their Hall of Fame before the game (large multipurpose building at the south end of the stadium--with glass to actually see the game) shows that EMU has a much finer NFL historic roster than Ohio has had.  First round draft pick (22nd pick) cornerback Ron Johnson and John Banaszak played for EMU and went on to multi Super Bowl fame with the Steelers.  Those were the only two that when I saw the names jumped out at me, there could have been others.

Actually their NBA pedigree is light years ahead of Ohio as well when you consider one of their players probably has by himself  more NBA points scored than all former Ohio graduates composite of points, rebounds, steals, blocks, turnovers--George "The Iceman" Gervin who finished his career with 26,595 points, 5,602 rebounds and 2,798 assists!  Add Earl Boykins and that is some awesome MAC success.

We have Mike Schmidt but they counter with Cy Young and World Series Champion as a player and as a coach, Bob Welch.  With fellow pitcher college teammate Bob Ochinko this dynamic duo led EMU into the college world series twice, finishing 2nd and were the two best I saw come to Athens during my college days.

One funny thing was the trivia question, which asked what year Rynearson Stadium opened. The first 1,000 people to text the correct answer could get a free ID cardholder. I really want to know how many of those they actually gave away. I'd be shocked if it was even half of them. And not because it was a hard question. The answer was in the free program, but then again, most people were sitting on those to avoid sitting on the wet bleachers.

I thought the rule was that a school can't count tickets distributed in the community for free...that they have to be actually sold for something, even if a mere pittance.  Am I right? 

Yes, but here's how EMU has done it in the past. A portion of their Athletics spending is funded by the EMU Foundation. Instead of the EMU Foundation passing the money straight to the AD, it buys tickets. Then, the tickets are donated. I think BG has done something similar in the past when in danger of not making the 15k average. Instead of having corporate sponsorship dollars go straight to the AD, they buy tickets instead. In some cases, BG announced attendance was more than capacity of the Doyt.

yes, I recall the rule being that the average attendance of 15K? for the year had to be fans in attendance, and this average had to be achieved every other year.  Given the very poor attendance for EMU last year, this is the year they "make up" to attempt to stay in compliance.  This average attendance can not be achieved by just buying and distributing tickets to folks that don't show up.

OCF:  In a quick search I found only one recent and decent article to read, and it looks like we may be partially ready to eat a little crow.  It appears as of 2008 there is still an attendance figure on the books, however the article notes that the rule has NEVER been enforced.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/63513-low-attendance-t...