Thank you Bob! And thank you for the warm welcomes everyone.
The issue of student interest in athletics is something I have thought of myself and I know you all have thought of too. I hope that I can give you a student's perspective on this topic.
I honestly believe that our student attendance to basketball games are fine, and here's why:
1. You have to consider the proportions of students who attend the games and the size of the school. Students at UR (like many other colleges) come from a wide variety of backgrounds that offer differing views on cultural upbringing. So it is not expected that all the student's who attend this university will all be interested in sports. Look at VCU for instance. They have 31,000 total students. Not all of the 31,000 students are VCU fans. I'm sure a good portion of them don't make an effort to go to the games. However, due to the vast size of the school, alumni, etc. they have a bigger fan base although not necessarily proportionally bigger. However, there are exceptions like Duke for instance. Even though I don't have data to support this claim, I'm that there is a greater proportion of students - than at the average university - who follow and attend more basketball games at schools like Duke, Notre Dame, even VCU, religiously, and this leads me to my second reason to why our attendance is ok, and that is success.
2. In a perfect world fans would go to the games regardless of a team's success, however, that is not the case. There will always be those fans (like me) who go to the game regardless of our record, who we play, and the time of day. And there will always be those students who still couldn't care less even if we were #1 in the country. But most students fall in the area that lies in between. So if they have the choice between going to LaSalle on a Wednesday night and finishing their homework, going to the gym, whatever, they will do that instead because there is not much incentive for them to go to the game. I would also like to mention that I define success in two ways: 1. The team's record, ranking, national exposure 2. The quality of teams that we bring into the Robins Center. If one, or the other (or hopefully both!) happens more students will come. That is why there was such a turn out for VCU, GW, the NIT, Minnesota and #13 UMASS last year and so on. On a side note, that is also why we generally don't care as much about football games. There isn't the same draw as playing Morehead State as there is to playing #13 UMASS in the country on national television. I know it stinks, but I'll admit that I don't really follow football as much because of the circumstances, which leads me to my third and final point.
3. We place value on certain sports. This whole time I was referring to basketball: men's basketball to be specific. We always discuss more student turn out to games, but in all honesty we are referring to Men's Basketball and Football. And in football, around the country, we generally refer to power conference FBS schools because that is where all the publicity is. At the end of the day, other sports (including FCS) won't garner that much student interest because of the value we place on the sports. Even though I don't go to tennis matches for instance, doesn't mean that I don't want them to win or I don't support them. I just don't have as much of an interest in tennis. Now, if we had a national ranked tennis team for instance, I'm sure more students would be interest in going to watch (because of point 2) however that is not the case.
Ultimately, and I know this was long so kudos for anyone who read all of this, I don't understand when people make the claim our student sections is bad. Actually, I do understand but I would like to point out the student's perspective. Yes, you can say having only 100 students go to a football game shows "no school spirit" but like I said above, there are reasons for that. And those reasons apply to every college. Sure it would be great to have all students go to all the games, but we have to be honest with ourselves. We are a small national ranked school that places an emphasis on education first and fore most. We don't have that much exposure (although the A10 is great, and I would love to go to the Big East!) which doesn't incentivize those " in between" students to come, and the cultural of this country places more interest for certain sports.
In the end, I am extremely proud of our school and think we do have a great student section: as evident by the game last night against Miami. Sure it can be approved on, but that will depend on a lot of variables that - as other fans - is beyond our control.
Go Spiders!
. Very few students came for the first two thirds of the season. It was a little better when they started winning more. They won 16 out of 20 games at home, so winning isn't the obvious problem of student attendance. You may have hit the nail on head saying that many UR college students just do not care for sports.
