Has fan apathy already set in?

rfjeff9

rfjeff9

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
445
slugboy said:
About our attendance and how much our opponents drive our attendance, around a decade ago there was talk about moving to the Big10 and getting great attendance and a better budget from that. It hasn't worked out that way for Maryland, and it hasn't worked out for Rutgers. Ohio State just played Northwestern on a Friday night, and I often see posts about how good teams don't have to play on weeknights.

Yeah, we get better attendance with some teams like Clemson, to some degree VT, and UGA. The best way to build attendance is to have people interested in watching GT in person.

There are better teams to schedule for attendance and fan interest than USF and some of the other teams we've scheduled, and we should do a better job with scheduling, but fixing our own house should be the main job in front of us.
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I like the way you think. I want to schedule SEC teams if we can get marginally on track. Wouldn’t mind seeing home and home vs the Mississippi teams, Tennessee, SCAR, Vandy to start. And why not? It would generate more interest rather than South Florida or Temple. Now that these teams don’t have to deal with knee blocking, maybe we can get more interest.

What would be the down side of scheduling these OOC local teams?
 
bobongo

bobongo

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rfjeff9 said:
I like the way you think. I want to schedule SEC teams if we can get marginally on track. Wouldn’t mind seeing home and home vs the Mississippi teams, Tennessee, SCAR, Vandy to start. And why not? It would generate more interest rather than South Florida or Temple. Now that these teams don’t have to deal with knee blocking, maybe we can get more interest.

What would be the down side of scheduling these OOC local teams?
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I would love to play them and I wouldn't be against it, but just to play devil's advocate I'll point out that the coming schedule is already pretty tough as it is. We play two OOC power-5 conference teams (and Notre Dame) every year for the next 8 years starting in 2020. One of them is Ugag every year, plus Notre Dame for about half of those years. And remember that our division crossover is Clemson. So I would love to play these teams but we already have probably a top-10 schedule difficulty as it is, for the next 8 years running.

One major impediment is this Notre Dame tie-in. If we didn't have that, we could schedule some local SEC talent more easily. But Notre Dame is an interesting draw as it is.
 
AlabamaBuzz

AlabamaBuzz

Helluva Engineer
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4,020
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Hartselle, AL (originally Rome, GA)
5 stages of dealing with death

denial
anger
bargaining
sadness
acceptance

I have reached the 6th stage - treat football the way I treat basketball - expect nothing and do not allow myself to get emotionally involved.

I believe the experiment (that has been tried before) will end in mediocrity, but I am willing to wait and see.
 
rfjeff9

rfjeff9

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
445
bobongo said:
I would love to play them and I wouldn't be against it, but just to play devil's advocate I'll point out that the coming schedule is already pretty tough as it is. We play two OOC power-5 conference teams (and Notre Dame) every year for the next 8 years starting in 2020. One of them is Ugag every year, plus Notre Dame for about half of those years. And remember that our division crossover is Clemson. So I would love to play these teams but we already have probably a top-10 schedule difficulty as it is, for the next 8 years running.

One major impediment is this Notre Dame tie-in. If we didn't have that, we could schedule some local SEC talent more easily. But Notre Dame is an interesting draw as it is.
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This is true, but it was more of a strategy to draw local interest. To the SEC watchers, I think GT vs Tennessee or SCAR is of MUCH greater interest than GT vs ND. SEC country fans couldn’t care less about GT vs ND. And that is where we live.

For instance, I listen to my local Jackson sports talk radio show every morning in the fall. It is 95% SEC commentary and the only time they talk about another school is if the SEC team is playing them (and even rarely speaking of Southern Miss). Completely SEC centered, and with good reason. So more mention of Tech can only help IMO.

I get the SOS problem, but would it really get worse playing those teams I mentioned? I think it would only help our coverage and perception in the region to add these high profile (due to regionality) teams. And I am not suggesting we schedule the current power houses.

I think we are both barking up the same tree on different sides of it. And FWIW, I don’t like the ND tie in. Screw these fence sitters.
 

White_Gold

GT Athlete
Messages
314
Location
Dahlonega
slugboy said:
About our attendance and how much our opponents drive our attendance, around a decade ago there was talk about moving to the Big10 and getting great attendance and a better budget from that. It hasn't worked out that way for Maryland, and it hasn't worked out for Rutgers. Ohio State just played Northwestern on a Friday night, and I often see posts about how good teams don't have to play on weeknights.

Yeah, we get better attendance with some teams like Clemson, to some degree VT, and UGA. The best way to build attendance is to have people interested in watching GT in person.

There are better teams to schedule for attendance and fan interest than USF and some of the other teams we've scheduled, and we should do a better job with scheduling, but fixing our own house should be the main job in front of us.
Click to expand...

We should be offering food/drink at reasonabler prices and such to get families and the youngins involved.
 
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