Well like we try to tell teams, I'm rooting for a recession to get prices back in order. Teams have charged too much. For any ticket at OSU it's 2900 for a pair, without anything else.

And often they are not able to direct that donation to a specific area.

Well, TOSU being down 4% is kind of amazing. If they are down then the MAC schools should expect to be down even more.

I don't think there is a direct correlation. It depends on the reason. If the reason is increasing ambivalence towards football, as Recovering Journalist suggests, the MAC may be hit harder than OSU. If it is due to TV, as the Dispatch suggests, it could go either way, but OSU might be down more. If it's due to price, as buckeye to bobcat suggests, the effect could go the other way, as fans opt for the lower ticket prices in the MAC.

I suspect it's some of all the above reasons.

The article says that not only did OSU drop from 53,151 season tickets to 50,868 total season tickets but also 6,000 of that lower total was for partial season tickets. That's about a 15% drop in full season tickets. Of course a lot of it is the high prices and once people get priced out they never return because they figure the prices will never go back down.

Imagine if Ohio could combine solid FBS opponents regularly at home like Marshall, Cincinnati, Syracuse, Iowa State with a blueblood in Peden like Florida State or LSU once in a while. Boise State has Florida State at home in 2020 and Michigan State in 2022. For it to work Peden would probably have to be pushed above 30,000 in capacity to get better contracts signed.

So there are problems littered in this post (like most of your posts). It’s not entirely the fault of millennials that they aren’t reading local news because opportunities to consume local news is dwindling. Papers in low circulation/rural areas are closing or consolidating, resulting on a focus on national news. Papers in higher circulation//urban areas are cutting out circulation days while also facing consolidation and cuts in local reporting. News is also focusing more on their online product. Papers have also increased significantly in cost. I’m shocked that the Dispatch still has readers paying $5 for the Sunday edition. These factors impact all groups, not just millennials.

As far as comparing media consumption during the good old days to now, it has changed to meet the needs of consumers. It’s true that you don’t see present day Husker LCs reading physical papers. The reason (spoiler alert) is people are bringing in 100s of sources of media through phones and tablets and that is a good thing. People are still reading sports news, they just have choices. It’s a fun exercise to rip on people that didn’t experience the antiquated days of reading a physical paper and watching the evening news with the family around the black and white television. I would much prefer a world where today’s generations have choices. Contrast this with your generation of the good old days that tends to limit its scope of media choices. There is also a lot of irony in the statement about negative news. Once again, it’s your generation that contributes the most to the growth of corporatist entertainment news.

I had a discussion with one of my sons about reasons for declining interest in football, and given that he doesn't care about football, I thought it would be interesting to get his opinion, even though it's just a sample size of one. I offered some plausible reasons:
1. Concern about CTE, and injuries
2. Price
3. Ease and comfort of watching at home rather than on TV
4. Kids grow up today playing video games more than playing sports
5. Not being constantly exposed to news about it growing up

He discounted #1 immediately with the comment "it's always been that way, and people didn't care". His other comment was that he just doesn't enjoy it, and that he played a lot of baseball growing up because he enjoyed it, so he follows baseball. He also believes prices are a factor. He also discounted reason 5 because we did have the paper most of the time he was growing up.

In the end that leaves me with price as a factor, and with the theory that with video games as an option, kids today are more selective about what sports they play, and thus, which ones they will like and follow as they grow.

As much as society has changed small market newspapers continue to be an effective way to stay on top of all the events in a community. Its different living in a bedroom community of a major city. It has 160,000 people but as far as thing to do only 5% of what the region offers. When I'm looking for something to do for a weekend I have to hunt through 10 online sites none of which even have half of what is going on. Today I have a preset plan to go to a winery somewhere but I might be missing something better in my backyard. Small market papers also are very good for alerting you to new businesses and coupons. I spend 95% of my money in other communities than my own which makes sense in a metro of 10 million so there is no point in subscribing to a local paper.

Same. Gave up my 4 Tower Club seats this year due primarily to cost. I’ll still end up at 2-3 games.

I would cite instant replay and the extended length of games as other items that may be unappealing for fans.

I'd say OU has probably seen its peak enrollment already because of some of those factors. The pop in FB attendance from a growing alumni base that I predicted probably already happened 2012-2017. Peden though is in the midst of a long stretch without any big football games. Homecoming against Miami in 2015 might be the last one. Kansas in 2017 maybe. The key to developing a season ticket base is to get fans in the door for a big game and then they'll decide to pick up season tickets in the future. Imagine the crowd if it was Pitt in Peden instead of Rhode Island. Fans who are buying tickets to see a game in Pittsburgh would be doing it instead in Athens.

My tickets do not require a donation and are still $1400 with MAC style and bad games being priced so high it’s hard to get money back, much less make a profit.