DISQUS

snissen · 11 months ago

Great piece, of course. R&R might as well have published "Are you 3l33t enough for r0x0r internet gaming?"

Matt_J · 11 months ago

Rumors and Rants usually does a pretty decent job with their writing. Most of the guys either are or have been sports reporters in the past. They're not exactly the leet-speak type.

Matt_J · 11 months ago

On one side, all of the guys who write Rumors and Rants are IU alums, if I remember correctly (or at least four of them are). On the other side, I think some of them live in San Diego, so they might not have seen as many games? But, still, I'd expect one of them to know that attendance was down and not suddenly wake up to this shocker.

Are some of the higher priced tickets owned by corporations so they can take clients to games to help ease them into the sale? I'm sure there's still plenty of season ticket holders from the general citizenry, but I'm also sure that the numbers have gone down a little bit in that area, as well.

I have no idea on this, so I'll ask you guys, how many tickets (if any) does IU hold for general admission during the season? Wouldn't the stats in those numbers be a better reflection on the situation than season ticket holders?

Hick Flick · 11 months ago

Indeed, all five of us went to school in Bloomington. We also built the city on rock and roll.

Edward Layleyhands · 11 months ago

You can't get mad at anyone for the lack of attendance but Sampson. Don't blame it on the students. Don't blame it on the fair weather fans. This is a very common thing in sports. If your team is bad, your attendance is going to drop. It's that simple. There is not a college b-ball team in the country that would keep sell out crowds if their team was as bad as ours. You would even see some empty seats in the tiny Cameron Indoor if they were going through what we were going through. There has to be a direct correlation between games won and seats filled.

Ryan, use your connections to get Jeff Sagarin to do a correlation for us. He's an IU fan right? Got his MBA there.

tdawg · 11 months ago

they are offering students $5 tickets for tomorrows game, and they can take friends and family

snissen · 11 months ago

...

Andy · 11 months ago

I am going to the game tonight, making the trip down from South Bend, and found that yes, we could get balcony tickets through the university as recently as this past monday, but lower level seats are not available for more than one person. And on stubhub, where we got our tickets, you still had to pay twice face value for more than 2 seats together in the lower level. Maybe the Hall is not filled to capacity every night, but the fact that you can not get 4 seats together in the lower level for face value was SHOCKING to me. I think that is a real testament to the fan base. With how bad this team is, you should be able to get tickets for next to nothing.

I can guarantee you that if a program like Illinois, Wisconsin or Iowa had a year like we are having they would let you into their Big Ten home games for a can of soup just to get a few people in the door. Not so at IU this year.

R and R may be right, next year there will be more people in attendance, but the number of empty seats to fill could be a lot higher with how bad this team is. I think the level of support is AMAZING considering how the things have been since Knight left.

I'll report back after the game tonight and give you my thoughts on the crowd. Something tells me that it will still be a better crowd than i have seen at Notre Dame in the past decade, and that program is on the rise.

Andy - 2002 IU Alum

Pete · 11 months ago

While I agree that many of the students may want to get tickets again next year, the bigger question is will they still be able to get tickets from the previous allottment!

My guess is that while trying to cajole students into buying tickets was such a complete fiasco this year that they may simply opt to reduce the allottment and sell some of these tickets to alumni and the general public.

I have to imagine that Tom Crean was disappointed that with his urging they waited till the first game to release these tickets resulting in way too many tickets going unsold.

Economically, it would have been better to sell these tickets early in the fall to the public and then if some opted not to show up- at least the gate attendence numbers would not be so pathetic.

tberry · 11 months ago

Many supposed fans are not really fans at all. They are just posers that want to be associated with success. When IU is successful they want to be seen as part of that success. When IU is losing they stay away so that no one will think they are also losers.

It has always been true that if you win they will come but if you lose they will not. IU Football is another stellar example.

McD · 11 months ago

If the people not buying tickets aren't really major fans in the first place, does that mean you're telling us there are only about 13K people who will support IU no matter what? And on a per-game basis, does that mean there are only about 5,000-8,000 students (out of a 20-30K-ish size student body) who will support IU no matter what? Sounds like fairweather fandom to me.

Attendance was only 15,626 for the Penn State game, according to the team's website tonight. On $5 ticket night. But hey, at least there was a decent bump. I probably should have mentioned I can't really blame people who bought season tickets and didn't show because they saw their seats are in the high end of the balcony or the highest rows underneath the balcony. Those are some horrible-ass seats.

BUT, the fact that even this game didn't sell out and they had to put on a cheap ticket promotion in the first place speaks to the fact that the IU fanbase is more like the other average fan bases like Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan and unlike the above-average fanbases like Duke and UNC. All along, IU fans have deluded themselves into thinking we were part of the latter instead of the former. Guess we're not. So I'm not really mad, I suppose, just disappointed.

You argue there are many better things to do than watch this team lose. Well, for real fans, especially the students, going to the games tends to trump the awful BTN broadcast, or anything else, for that matter. Where is the commitment? Being a fan is all about loving the team because they're YOUR team, and you support them no matter what. It's akin (though only metaphorically) to having a kid who's a troublemaker but is still your kid.

And whining about $220 when it's always been possible to put the tickets on one's bursar bill (unless that changed in the last couple of years), thus using student loans or other funding to pay for them? Not to mention the fact that the average college student is more affluent on average than ever before (you did mention a college freshman having his "portfolio" killed)? Come on.

Didn't mean to make you swoon with my strong language, either. I apologize.

Eamonn · 11 months ago

First of all, equating Illinois' fan base with Iowa's is silly. Iowa can't fill a student section to save their lives. Illinois kids have to fundraise just for the chance to get student tickets, and their entire stadium is sold out and cloaked in bright orange every single game. I hate me some Illinois, but it's hard to call their fan base "average"; it's nowhere near as awful as Iowa's.

Second: The whole point of Ryan's piece, or at least part of it, was to drive home the idea that most students are fairweather fans. Most students aren't going to sit in the balcony to watch IU play Penn State in the middle of the day on Saturday, nor are most IU students going to buy season tickets, $220 or not. Think about the percentages here. If there are 36,000 undergrads at IU, and Assembly Hall seats about 8,000 students, that's only a fraction of the student population that even has an interest in season tickets in the first place. When the team is horrible, you're going to lose a fraction of the latter group around the margins.

Complaining about "real fandom" or "supporting the team through thick and thin" or whatever else is nice. It makes emotional sense, especially to people like us, who spend time blogging about sports. Clearly, we care. But everyone else is a swing voter, and there isn't a single student section in the country that wouldn't experience similar loss if their team was playing at roughly the level of IPFW. It's just reality.

Oh, and to plenty of students, $220 is $220, whether you pay for it now or in five years. That's not cheap to most people, least of all people who are, say, working themselves through school, or at the very least have to work part time for their spending money. Not everyone can get Mom and Dad to plunk for basketball tickets, strange as that may seem.