GopherLady: This soon-to-be 8-0 Gophers team deserves better. (picture)

[builtbadgers]

None of it takes away my support, just observations. There is a faithful 10,000 that has weathered a incredible amount of failure here. I look at those conference records in both major sports and it is decades of mediocrity.

 

[oak_street1981]

Agree. Always said this was not a great college sports market. When Miami was winning they sold 75,000 seats. I am from the west coast and have seen the situation at Stanford. It is a small school with bigger stars on campus than athletes. Plus they are great competing in a ton of things instead of watching others. UCLA has had giant crowds when they were winning. We will not have them no matter how much we win. We built a small stadium. I been in all the facilities in this town and we will yield 40% of capacity to the opponents fans and you rarely see that anywhere.

Good for you.

UCLA has not drawn squat for almost 30 years and even when they were winning under Terry Donahue at the LA Coliseum (Rose Bowl has been a disaster as home field) they did not always draw that well.

Heck, even USC had pretty rotten attendance, other than the post NFL years after Pete Carroll brought USC back to life.

"We" built the right sized stadium for the fan base, just like Duke has a small basketball arena that is apparently right for their fan base. (rich, white kids from the Northeast, and boosters)

 

[builtbadgers]

Agree. Duke could sell 15,000 seats for home games but they have this very expensive point of entry as people from all over the country fly in to go. They have a incredible environment. Plus, revenue is no big deal as they have the supersize endowment. We did build the right size stadium, we will never be that 80,000 seat, fantastic tailgate experience. The key is to be the best at how we do it. The most important part we got done, we hired the right football coach. I just want to fill what we have and to win a conference title once in awhile and go to the Rose and Orange Bowls twice in a generation.

 

[oak_street1981]

I have always wondered what made the Duke arena so highly regarded. On TV it reminds me of the Northwestern Welsh Ryan experience before they renovated it, with better student attendance. Those baskets hanging from the ceiling remind me of a high school facility. If I was going for a retro look, I would pick the Butler/ Hinkle Field House over it.

Would the good citizens of Durham be the target audience to fill the 15,000 seat Duke Basketball arena if one existed? My understanding is that the typical "southern" resident of Durham does not have lot in common with the average Duke student, much of any affinity for the university.

To get to that 15K number, maybe there is a lot of pent up demand by the good people of Durham NC to see their beloved Duke team in person, or charter flights full of elites from Greenwich, Boston, Martha's Vineyard and Manhattan to pack the place.

The Gopher stadium was engineered to allow 30,000 more seats without additional basic infrastructure, footings, ect so it is possible. It does not help the tailgating that the city and University in the Joel Maturi era did all they could to snuff it out when the stadium opened but.....

 

[GophersInIowa]

Yes, attendance is a “problem” everywhere. It just depend on if that “problem” is selling 25% of a 45K stadium or filling the last 1K seats at a 70K stadium. I remember some people trying to sell that it was a problem at Clemson on here not too long ago. But, we aren’t a
Sensitive fan base. Nah.


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Of course it's all relative. My point wasn't to say the Gophers and Auburn's fan bases are pretty much the same in terms of numbers. It's not of course.