Pack The Dodd

THWG

THWG

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Johnson_buzz said:
We need to do better as a fan base showing up to games. This weekend we have a chance to go above .500 for the first time in a long time. Showing up in numbers matters to the team and it matters to recruits. We are close to having a really good team so lets show up and show out.
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I'll be there with 5 others. First game I've been to since CPJ retired, so I'm very excited!
 
IronJacket7

IronJacket7

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The lack of support from our fanbase at home games is a direct link to many L's in the history of our team, IMO.

Poor showing by our fanbase through the years has had a huge impact on recruiting, the mental attitude of players and coaches themselves, and many other areas.

If we want to be a top level program, it starts and ends with our fanbase.
 
Lil G

Lil G

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704
IronJacket7 said:
The lack of support from our fanbase at home games is a direct link to many L's in the history of our team, IMO.

Poor showing by our fanbase through the years has had a huge impact on recruiting, the mental attitude of players and coaches themselves, and many other areas.

If we want to be a top level program, it starts and ends with our fanbase.
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It’s a symbiotic relationship, the contribution of one aids the other. But teams with unconditional love do seem to have way more peaks than valleys..
Teams like Nebraska, Texas A&M, Auburn, all have money, yes. But their stadiums are also packed during poor seasons. That branding goes a long way with recruits.
 
IronJacket7

IronJacket7

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Lil G said:
It’s a symbiotic relationship, the contribution of one aids the other. But teams with unconditional love do seem to have way more peaks than valleys..
Teams like Nebraska, Texas A&M, Auburn, all have money, yes. But their stadiums are also packed during poor seasons. That branding goes a long way with recruits.
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If our fanbase would sellout the stadium every home game regardless of W's and L's then you would see a program that you never thought possible. We are our biggest problem.
 

SOWEGA Jacket

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2,075
Some of you are just absolutely wrong regarding our fanbase. You are calling out a phantom. Our fanbase is about 25-30,000 strong. If we win some games we’ll draw GT alum who are not fans to the games for the social and fun aspect which pushes our attendance to 40,000plus some games. I think the problem some of you have is equating an alum with a fan. That is not the case at a school who brings in the student body we do.

I‘m tired of seeing this theme that we have a bad fanbase. We don’t. What we have is a much smaller fanbase than alumni who graduate from GT. I’ve told this before but my son is in one of the larger frats (he can see Peters from his room) and he says they probably have less than 10 brothers who are GT fans. The rest go to the games just because it’s the social thing to do but they all have had their favorite teams from where they grew up (and it ain’t GT). The other week I stopped by campus to have lunch with him and just driving around campus I saw Michigan, Ohio State, Bama, and Texas shirts.

We can definitely add more fans who end up as alum if we start winning and do it for a few seasons in a row, but right now we have a very loyal and small fanbase who showed out at Ole Miss (even if you never saw it on TV). Yelling about alum who aren’t fans does nothing because they don’t even know you are talking about them because they aren’t fans. Now sure, if you know a 30 year old alum who has GT stickers on his car, a GT welcome mat, wears a GT hat to work, has GT golf club covers, has a GT birdhouse in his front yard who lives in Dalton or Macon who doesn’t come to any games then I guess you could talk to him about his support. But more than likely that dude already has season tickets and comes to the games.
 

stinger 1957

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We're at a bottom I've never seen us before and I've been watching a long time. It will take time, probably need to stop the pitting one against the other and let it take it's normal course except for what the school admins and AA does to help it along. When you're in a deep hole and nothing to grab hold of it is the toughest part of the whole process IMO and that is where we are, but I feel sure we are going to climb out, I see multiple signs that tell me it will happen. Let's enjoy the process of seeing it come back and the players that will go down in the history of bringing it back. In a short time we will have new fans, new donors, students that become fans for the first time and it will pick up momentum as we go IMO. We will never have the number of fans in the seats that the rural schools have IMO, I've lived in one of those places and it is the only game in town so to speak, that's not the case in metro areas, but the TV money comes because of the large media metro which means you have fans watching.
 
78pike

78pike

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864
Lil G said:
It’s a symbiotic relationship, the contribution of one aids the other. But teams with unconditional love do seem to have way more peaks than valleys..
Teams like Nebraska, Texas A&M, Auburn, all have money, yes. But their stadiums are also packed during poor seasons. That branding goes a long way with recruits.
Click to expand...
It's interesting that all three of the schools you used as examples all happen to be in small towns that center around the universities they have. I haven't been to College Station but Lincoln and Auburn both would be next to nothing without the large universities. Local bars, clubs, shops etc. would go out of business if those universities didn't control the local economy (and much of the population). Just saying that comparing Georgia Tech, in the heart of Atlanta with tons of alternative entertainment, to Auburn, College Station and Lincoln is like comparing apples to oranges. You will note that teams located in large metropolitan cities suffer much like we do when the team isn't doing well. Look at Miami for instance. A few years back there was nobody in the stands. They start winning and the stands fill up. I think we will see Grant Field (can't bring myself to call it Hyundai Field) fill up like years past when we start winning more than we lose.
 

MWBATL

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78pike said:
It's interesting that all three of the schools you used as examples all happen to be in small towns that center around the universities they have. I haven't been to College Station but Lincoln and Auburn both would be next to nothing without the large universities. Local bars, clubs, shops etc. would go out of business if those universities didn't control the local economy (and much of the population). Just saying that comparing Georgia Tech, in the heart of Atlanta with tons of alternative entertainment, to Auburn, College Station and Lincoln is like comparing apples to oranges. You will note that teams located in large metropolitan cities suffer much like we do when the team isn't doing well. Look at Miami for instance. A few years back there was nobody in the stands. They start winning and the stands fill up. I think we will see Grant Field (can't bring myself to call it Hyundai Field) fill up like years past when we start winning more than we lose.
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I believe this is spot on. GT fans vote with theri feet (and $). Win, and they will be there in numbers. Anyone remember how GT fans took over Orlando for the bowl game in 1990 to win the National Championship? And how they departed in droves under the TFG regime? Win, and the fan base will come out of hiding....
 
78pike

78pike

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864
SOWEGA Jacket said:
Some of you are just absolutely wrong regarding our fanbase. You are calling out a phantom. Our fanbase is about 25-30,000 strong. If we win some games we’ll draw GT alum who are not fans to the games for the social and fun aspect which pushes our attendance to 40,000plus some games. I think the problem some of you have is equating an alum with a fan. That is not the case at a school who brings in the student body we do.

I‘m tired of seeing this theme that we have a bad fanbase. We don’t. What we have is a much smaller fanbase than alumni who graduate from GT. I’ve told this before but my son is in one of the larger frats (he can see Peters from his room) and he says they probably have less than 10 brothers who are GT fans. The rest go to the games just because it’s the social thing to do but they all have had their favorite teams from where they grew up (and it ain’t GT). The other week I stopped by campus to have lunch with him and just driving around campus I saw Michigan, Ohio State, Bama, and Texas shirts.

We can definitely add more fans who end up as alum if we start winning and do it for a few seasons in a row, but right now we have a very loyal and small fanbase who showed out at Ole Miss (even if you never saw it on TV). Yelling about alum who aren’t fans does nothing because they don’t even know you are talking about them because they aren’t fans. Now sure, if you know a 30 year old alum who has GT stickers on his car, a GT welcome mat, wears a GT hat to work, has GT golf club covers, has a GT birdhouse in his front yard who lives in Dalton or Macon who doesn’t come to any games then I guess you could talk to him about his support. But more than likely that dude already has season tickets and comes to the games.
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You are spot on. And another thing regarding our alumni is after graduation many leave the city for other parts of the country and the globe for their initial jobs. You don't see that with schools that are diploma mills spitting out Business degrees or Hotel management degrees by the tens of thousands (not try to disparage anyone that gets a four year degree by I think you get my meaning).
 

SOWEGA Jacket

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78pike said:
It's interesting that all three of the schools you used as examples all happen to be in small towns that center around the universities they have. I haven't been to College Station but Lincoln and Auburn both would be next to nothing without the large universities. Local bars, clubs, shops etc. would go out of business if those universities didn't control the local economy (and much of the population). Just saying that comparing Georgia Tech, in the heart of Atlanta with tons of alternative entertainment, to Auburn, College Station and Lincoln is like comparing apples to oranges. You will note that teams located in large metropolitan cities suffer much like we do when the team isn't doing well. Look at Miami for instance. A few years back there was nobody in the stands. They start winning and the stands fill up. I think we will see Grant Field (can't bring myself to call it Hyundai Field) fill up like years past when we start winning more than we lose.
Click to expand...
All true. But what you also have is a pipeline of alumni who see their kids, grandkids, great grandkids all going to that school in that community in that state who then stay in that state to raise the next generation. We see the opposite at GT who prides itself on bringing in kids with no prior affiliation who then leave the state while at the same time ending generations of GT families who become UGA students then fans. I know, I know, the pathway program. Great, but they know full well that most kids who can get into GT have plenty of other offers and aren’t going to abandon the school and friends that showed them love.

And it all leads to where we are today - a very small fanbase with more alum who are not fans than alum that are fans while alienating a whole lot of local instate families who will never get over having their kid not get in when they were qualified. I could understand this strategy if we were growing more GT families in New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, etc and adding to our fandom footprint. But after 20-25 years of this strategy, the results are clear - we aren’t growing the fanbase by bringing in out of staters, yet it is clear that GT families have turned into UGA families and these are the people we see everyday and fill up stadiums.
 

takethepoints

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I saw something this weekend that we could try to do if more people came out. Oregon's colors are green and yellow. Brooks stadium is laid out in sections, just like at (and it always will be) Grant Field. The fans there are apparently told what color to wear for their section, either yellow or green. So the place looks like green, yellow, green, yellow, and so on. We could do that too and it would look so cool on tv.
 
78pike

78pike

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864
SOWEGA Jacket said:
All true. But what you also have is a pipeline of alumni who see their kids, grandkids, great grandkids all going to that school in that community in that state who then stay in that state to raise the next generation. We see the opposite at GT who prides itself on bringing in kids with no prior affiliation who then leave the state while at the same time ending generations of GT families who become UGA students then fans. I know, I know, the pathway program. Great, but they know full well that most kids who can get into GT have plenty of other offers and aren’t going to abandon the school and friends that showed them love.

And it all leads to where we are today - a very small fanbase with more alum who are not fans than alum that are fans while alienating a whole lot of local instate families who will never get over having their kid not get in when they were qualified. I could understand this strategy if we were growing more GT families in New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, etc and adding to our fandom footprint. But after 20-25 years of this strategy, the results are clear - we aren’t growing the fanbase by bringing in out of staters, yet it is clear that GT families have turned into UGA families and these are the people we see everyday and fill up stadiums.
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Hmmmm.....none of my kids or their kids are UGA fans. Among their first spoken words were "Go Jackets" and Boo Bulldogs". And they still say the same today, although the latter is sometimes spoken in more colorful language.
 
78pike

78pike

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864
takethepoints said:
I saw something this weekend that we could try to do if more people came out. Oregon's colors are green and yellow. Brooks stadium is laid out in sections, just like at (and it always will be) Grant Field. The fans there are apparently told what color to wear for their section, either yellow or green. So the place looks like green, yellow, green, yellow, and so on. We could do that too and it would look so cool on tv.
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When I was in school we had a flashcard section in the east stands that would supply colors and messages throughout the timeouts (or maybe it was halftime....that memory is a bit hazy) during games. Not sure when this tradition ended. Not the same as the Ducks but your post elicited that memory for some reason.
 
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