The question I have, is how long has there been a big disparity between announced attendance, vs butts in the seats? I'm guessing at most places it's been quite awhile. Also, as far as any athletic department is concerned, they care most about paid attendance.

As for keeping people in the seats for the duration, this is often caused by TV. When the game is beholden to TV money, games take longer. People -- not just students -- lose interest in staying in the stadium, often sitting on metal bleachers, for 4 hours for a regulation football game that doesn't include OT.

I can honestly say I have no intention in staying in the stadium on this coming Saturday for the duration against *Howard*. Honestly, unless there's a meaningful game in the MAC standings, or a truly exciting game/interesting opponent, that rule will pretty much apply for most games I go to. The only thing I unfortunately miss out on is the 110's post game show.

I think schools have always reported tickets sold, not people in the seats. I suspect that the disparity has gotten larger in recent years, and is therefore more noticeable. Ohio, in particular, has a policy that encourages the disparity, notably the family pack. Remember when Marshall fans discovered that they could buy a family pack of 4 season tickets for less than buying 4 Marshall single game tickets? That caused great reported sales numbers, but didn't help actual attendance at all.

Why do you think our athletic department cares more about paid attendance? Ever student here is buying tickets, as long as the subsidy is so great, butts in seats will not matter much. Ticket revenue is a very small part of a departments revenue stream.

I guess I was on to something years ago. What say you Mr. McKinney?

The MAC is in particular struggling with actual fans in seats because of the Midweek games. We know that.

I concur. Follow the old Nebraska strategy of getting companies in the area to purchase GA tickets and giving them out to employees. If the going ratio is 65% actual people per ticket on a Saturday Ohio could sell 40,000 tickets with the expectation 25,000 actually show up.

At the start of every college football season The Record has an article that goes through some of the top "issues" in college football.

One of this year's topics is "Fragile State Of Affairs".

It says college football has reached a saturation point.

It points out that both viewership and in person attendance are down.

They say this will translate into less money for future T.V. contracts.

This has all been said before,but this is the first time this paper put it front and center.

Excellent points rpbobcat and Ohio Stunter. We can dwell on mid week games and how many people leave at halftime, but the fact of the matter is there are so many cultural factors going on that blaming it on those two points misses the big picture.

Ohio Stunter used a great analogy with NASCAR. Let me throw out another one professional boxing. When I was a little kid in the early 70s I have faint memories of watching Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Jerry Quarry, Ernie Shavers etc. All of these men were in their prime and though some were better than others they were head and shoulders above what we saw in the next decade, which is why Mike Tyson was so dominant. Boxing was great in the 1970s, but it had already peaked. Like football it was a tough, hard, grinding sport that fewer people were willing to take up, because in the western world, societies were becoming more affluent. While travelling for work, I heard a couple of sports talk radio stations talk about the amount of big time high school football programs in the state lament that their youth and middle school programs are experiencing sharp declines.

The first place you are going to experience declines in college football is the non-Power 5 conferences. Eventually, it will work it's way through all of the conferences. College football followed by college basketball are my favorite sports to watch, but I have to admit that while football will always be with us, it has already peaked.

12 minute quarters would be interesting.

Replay though is the biggest culprit. I still say the amount of time it takes to review needs to be on a clock by itself. During the World Cup, there was replay of certain plays, and the decisions were made in 60-90 seconds most times after the referee saw the video. Why then, does it take football referees twice as long or more to review video? Same question could be asked of video replay in basketball. Give them 90 seconds and make a decision and move on with the games.

I agree that 3 Saturday home games is a buzzkill. But how has the level of play dropped?

Look, if a program like Alabama -- national TV, perennial championship contender, big-time coach, great weather -- has trouble getting students to games, it's time to re-consider our expectations for OU students.

From the article:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/sec/2018/10/0... /

Alabama has played exactly TWO non-conference true road games since Saban has been head coach, which in turn means their home games also suck. It's not the fans' fault you schedule dog poo opponents for home games, Nick.

I think he's scared to get beat on his home turf to be honest.

https://fbschedules.com/ncaa/alabama /