Very sorry to all for my serious lack of how to use the board correctly from a technical standpoint. Fyi Klime, we are not all cheap. Some of us have forked over very significant amounts of money. Really think most fans are bandwagon. In the Big 10 only Indiana maintained big crowds during their wretched stage which of course was short . Plus they are a basketball centric state. I have season tickets here, UW, UVA and my alma-UCLA . UW had a faithful 5000 pre Bennett, 20 years of sell outs and now i see empty seats. UVA was a ghost town pre TB and now it is packed and has a huge road contingent. UCLA is the worst, win huge or no one goes. What do you expect if your the school who only hangs national title banners, not even conference or final 4's. No NIT there. Fans here want to compete at the top of the conference in Hoops. Football, beat UW and Iowa once in awhile, maybe make the conference title game once every 10 years. Hockey is different. There are what, 60-70 teams with a built in advantage so fans expect frozen 4. Your right though, Don has done a great job. Fyi, Lehman has done a ton for the U , bUT THE BIG MONEY WESTERN SUBURBS have allegiances to the arts, medicine and their own Alma's. Golf buddy i travel with gives a million a year to Duke !
Good to hear about Lehman. Played 9 holes with him once when I was a teenager, beat him on 2 holes, too. lol
I didn't know about all of those I listed, and why I was asking.
Oh, I don't think ALL UMn fans are cheap, seems Baseball folk give back, and other programs find support out there. And there are probably things that can be pointed to, that explain why so many are.
From 68 to 96, outside of men's hockey and maybe men's gymnastics? How many Gopher sports teams were any good? The bb team was until Dutcher was almost done, but both Muss and Dutch's UMn resumes were stained with ugly scandals and NCAA investigations.
Also, back in the 60s and 70s and perhaps in the 80s and early 90s as well, the U struggled with issues of being a commuter school, to a larger degree than other universities, and so a lot of those commuter students didn't soak in the college environment that students at other schools so often do. Combined with the football team never really inspiring much in the way of excitement and the bb team just screwing up everytime it managed to find some success.
I'm not saying I'm an expert on the subject, but I believe I got the impression the U was trying to change things, the whole commuter thing, and was trying to make an effort to improve its sports teams, too.
But that would be almost 3 decades of alumni out there who might simply have come and gone and not developed an affection for the school. Also, a lot of Wisconsin residents came to the U as well, and a lot of them remained loyal to the Badgers. Not having an outdoor football stadium didn't help, either.
Just the combination of diehards claiming that they don't want to support teams that are not winning or are not trying (hence we find tons of empty seats for hockey and mens bb and football, too, which for such a small stadium could be argued is inexcusable) and the non-die hards saying they'd rather invest time and/or money in teams like the Vikes or T-Pups or Wild because a crippled bb team supposedly isn't trying hard enough or the #11 ranked hockey team with its 4 Top 4 wins isn't winning enough or trying hard enough? The idea that the men's hockey team should somehow always be ranked Top 4 in the country is just BEYOND unreasonable now that the landscape of men's college hockey has changed with the NHL looking more and more to colleges for new players. That wasn't the case 15 years ago.
And yes, I can believe that UCLA fans are worse.
And maybe its not fair to compare UMn to fan bases in places like Boise or Iowa or Kansas or St Cloud where there are far fewer options of what to do with your money.
Can't hardly expect the bandwagoners to latch onto losing teams.
But the diehards should support the players as much as possible, OR, just shut up and stop b1tching if those players don't feel like killing themselves for fans who won't come support them.
It goes both ways. But they made the most important EFFORT of all, they came HERE, not somewhere else. They put on the jersey. After they do that, its OUR turn to cheer them on and hope our cheers inspire them to play as hard as they can.