UAlbany's Future

[Albany Fan]

I don't understand why the reference to students leaving the area after graduation keeps being made regarding the future success of UAlbany sports. The community has to embrace them as will be the ones attending the events for sports entertainment. I still feel that Siena knocks the hopes of UAlbany's growth because they are limited based on resources that will be invested into their sports programs. I am not going to get too excited each year for those Marist rivalry matchups. I will give credit to Siena for generating quite a bit of excitement w/ their mid-major success, but it's the area residents not alumni who get the town buzzing when involved w/ NIT, etc. Last year this town became alive w/ having NCAA tournament here & not just because Syracuse was involved. I bet if Butler made it to the Sunday game against Syracuse that the crowd would have been divided in support & not talking about Butler fans being a factor. Again I know I can't compare UAlbany to Syracuse, but I know it's the community not alumni that are absorbing the sports entertainment that Syracuse brings. In fact, when SU teams are struggling, the community is reminded that support is still expected as purpose not only to provide entertainment as even told to get a life by SU AD or such. To me this means the community is main lifeline to success of teams not the Alumni as majority high tail out of area after graduating. Syracuse & Albany areas are similiar as to me not out of reality to expect good things to result. Hopefully the next UAlbany president will be like a Thomas Golisano who wants New York State Universities to thrive in college sports. Siena has topped out as will always be stepping stone for coaches but hope UAlbany becomes more than that. Yes it would be nice to stick 15,000 of UAlbany students into arena for games but aint gonna happen. I believe the community will be the main supporters in time.

[DaneFan2k3]

People will continue to mash me for my pessimistic views, but when you say "I believe the community will be the main supporters in time," all I have to say is that this same statement was the mantra for the A-C Yanks, Diamond Dogs, Albany Firebirds, Albany Patroons, Albany Attack (all now defunct), and still is for the Albany ConQuest and Albany River Rats.

 

Most people aren't willing to drive down the Northway after work for games ... I think it's sad, but I think it's true ... the only people that ever go to Rats or Quest games are those that get free tickets, and then when asked to pay for them they have something better to do.

 

On the flip side, to be a bit more positive, Albany is a town that does embrace winners ... and basketball is the main sport and always will be. Football is great and wins, but since they play teams that don't have "names" (Brown vs. Pitt, Monmouth vs. Syracuse) they won't bring the folks in.

[Patch]

DaneFan2k3

 

The debate will always continue. We won't have an answer for the Basketball part of the question until we start winning.

 

Which I'm expecting to be next year.

 

If Siena can get 7,000 to travel into Albany to get to the Pepsi I have to believe we can get 2000 to 2500 for a number of games next year if the team starts WINNING.

 

The draw has to come from a 7-10 mile area around the campus and hopefully about 500 from right on campus. If you can get 500 students and you're winning you can get that number to increase to a thousand rather easily.

 

The goal for attendance should be to avg 2500 in two years.

 

If the team wins and in two years they don't draw 2000-2500 then your premise may be the correct one.

 

Please bring your electronic Abacus to the games to ensure accurate counts!!!

[DaneFan2k3]

I think shooting for 500 students is terrible. With a school this size, it should be all students all the time. There is nothing else to do in the concrete jungle, so what the hell is going on with the student population? You should be able to get 500 students to a poetry reading on a campus this size, let alone a Division I basketball game. It's pathetic.

 

Hell, if 500-1,000 students came out to the games, the atmosphere would be tremendous and I think that alone would bring more people from the general community.

[Patch]

DaneFan2k3

 

I agree with you but I am posting what I feel. I would hope to get more than 500-1,000 students but thats been rare so far so I am starting with a realistic figure and hope for it to get better.

 

If I posted 2,000 students your "Song and Dance" would be HA! HA! that's never going to happen. I firmly believe if we start winning regularly we can draw between 2000-2500 consistently within 2 years.

 

If the students buy into it more.

[scottotile]

If you look at the rest of the AE conference, UA's attendence is pretty average for the conference. UA should be able to attract students considering the arena is on campus. But,we all agree, the only way that will happen is by winning and getting some postseason(AE tourney) wins.

[Dane96]

I guarantee you the school will average about 3-3500 when we start winning. During the 93-94 year, the last quarter of the season saw about 2000 fans per (maybe slightly under). AND THAT WAS FOR NO NAME SCHOOLS. For the playoff run, I think we averaged near 3800-4000.

 

What the school really needs to do, and I know this is a tough one but I am sure Voellker can figure it out: GETTING THE WORD OUT TO DOWNSTATERS!

 

The school has a large portion of students from downstate. These kids are the ones who need to be rah rah! I would garner many of them dont even know any of the state schools are DI. I think somehow VOELLKER and Dipasquale need to type up summaries for each game (we have them done already) and send them down to the papers for a small section. Even a blurb would be fine. Growing up, I had no clue who MANHATTEN WAS! I just knew they sucked. Then when they turned it around, the name was in my head...even from the small blurb. This at a time when SJU, CUSE and the HALL were kings.

 

Point is, when these kids get up to school and they see UA at let's say 7-3...they will be like...oh yeah, I remember seeing they played PITT in the paper (or even BU). Then they see the name on sportcenter (the ticker) and it all starts rolling. We definately have in's with Beat writers, especially those who cover the Giants. Give them an incentive or two on campus in the summer. Give and take.

 

I am telling you, this would increase fan support before students even got to campus....they just need to be reminded a team exists. WE start winning...they will come!

[Albany Fan]

This is in response to Dane2K3's response. As mentioned before, the reasons for the demise of many local teams (all pretty much minor league) varied. I refuse to spend $15 for minor league hockey as really don't follow or grew up following that sport. The Firebirds drew pretty darn well considering the gimmicky product it offered but success of league knocked us out as wanted higher profile type cities to house teams for tv, marketing, etc. Siena pretty much replaced the Patroons by taking over the local basketball scene as well as the Pepsi Arena. A/C Yanks were lost because of the crappy stadium that they played in & town/city would not meet financial costs needed for upgrades (pretty much like the current UAlbany football stadium which is a terrible place to watch a game as future upgrade would bring out more fans). I strongly feel that UAlbany basketball will be strongly supported in the near future. As mentioned in other post, Siena/Marist drew 7,000. Not too shabby as saw in NY Post that Maryland/Duke game was only around 9,000 or so. Drawing power is also strongly based on winning as well obviously. If Siena was tearing up the MAAC, they would average more fans than many other higher profile teams around the country.

[Dane96]

All valid points. One thing you shouldnt use is the duke-maryland comparison. Those kids camped out for a week for those tix, and if duke played at a larger capacity (I think 8200) that game would and could get 25k. My sister went to Maryland and even in their 15k seat Cole Field house, people had to camp for a week for those tix. Bottom line, ALBANY will outdraw Siena in the long run if we continue to make strides, get in touch w/ the student body (let's keep the jokes to basketball fellas), and reach out to the local community. I think most people relate to the middle class state school as opposed to upper crust Siena. Not a knock on Siena, just that most people are not sending their children off to Siena (not to say they go to Albany, but State school...yes). I think the community and students will come.

[Oldtimer]

I agree that the fans will have to come from the 7-10 mile radius until the students wake up and take advantage of their student fees. Interesting though is the season ticket holders around us(8 of 10) for the past for 4 years travel 15 to 40 miles(each way) to attend the games.

[Patch]

Nobody ever said that there hasn't been a nucleus of loyal fans. We just have to expand that which winning will do.

 

Winning will also make the journey of our loyal fans much more enjoyable.

[Dane Pound]

As UAlum72 mentioned to me during I think the Army game. It takes around 2000+ people in the RACC to really create a fun atmosphere. Any potential fan who walks into the RACC for their first game into that kind of atmosphere if going to want to come back because it feels like an event and not just a couple of hundred alumni sitting there and screaming at the refs. One of the reason the New Hampshire game was so disappointing was you had alot of potential fans and gave them no reason to come back-at least with their play.

As far as students go the only thing I can suggest is that they clearly mark a student section and encourage students to sit there and make it fun. Otherwise they naturally migrate to the chairback seats. They'll sit there for a few minutes and then a season-ticket holder will have one of the staff throw them out of their seats. I've seen this happen a variety of times and I cringe everytime I see it. I can't imagine anything that would be a student feel more hassled at a game than throwing them out of the season-ticket holders section.

[Albany Fan]

To Dane96. Thanks for the feedback. My point was people seem to think you have to draw 20,000 fans to a game for it to be a major success but w/ college hoop, a respectable figure seems to be around 8,000 which seems to be in reach for this area. I know RACC holds around 5,000 but talking about crowds that would come out for games at the Pepsi Arena.

[sarge965]

Attendance of 8000 a game - Look out ACC here we come.

I don't mean to disparage anyone's hopes for Albany's future attendance figures but really let's cool the hyperbole. If we can average around 4000 to 5000, we will be doing better than most of the other NCAA D1 programs. Look at the figures of the Atlantic 10 - the average home attendance league wide is 5055 right now. Only 2 teams Dayton (13055) and Xavier (10115) average more than 7000 fans per game at home. Perennial NCAA Cinderella - Richmond - averages 6320. I know some of this is due to smaller arenas on campus like the RACC, but many of these teams play in cities where larger arenas are available. Before we talk about moving to the Knick, excuse me - Pepsi Arena on a regular basis, we would need to do 2 things:

1- sell out the RACC on a regular basis

2- move to a BBC bigger,better conference

By the way I do think that next year you will see the average crowds at least double what they have been this year in the RACC. That would mean an average crowd of at least 2500. The more success we have the more we will beat this guestimate. I can't wait...

[DaneFan2k3]

Before we talk about moving to the Knick, excuse me - Pepsi Arena on a regular basis, we would need to do 2 things:

1- sell out the RACC on a regular basis

2- move to a BBC bigger,better conference

I think moving to the Pepsi at any point would be a mistake, but even if we began selling out the RACC on a regular basis then that's a minimum of 5-10 years down the road realistically.

 

If you can't get 200-500 students to walk 200-1,000 FEET to the on-campus arena, you certainly won't get half that to drive down to the Pepsi and pay for parking (in most cases).

 

Then, moving on to this quote:

The Firebirds drew pretty darn well considering the gimmicky product it offered but success of league knocked us out as wanted higher profile type cities to house teams for tv, marketing, etc.  A/C Yanks were lost because of the crappy stadium that they played in & town/city would not meet financial costs needed for upgrades (pretty much like the current UAlbany football stadium which is a terrible place to watch a game as future upgrade would bring out more fans). I strongly feel that UAlbany basketball will be strongly supported in the near future. As mentioned in other post, Siena/Marist drew 7,000. Not too shabby as saw in NY Post that Maryland/Duke game was only around 9,000 or so. Drawing power is also strongly based on winning as well obviously. If Siena was tearing up the MAAC, they would average more fans than many other higher profile teams around the country.

 

I will give you the River Rats part, as even the NHL doesn't draw. Fine. But the Firebirds? They were GIVING tickets away (literally giving them away, as in free) in the first few years, and the team was winning, hence you saw large crowds. Once they started actually CHARGING for the tickets so many had gotten for free for so long (because they were bleeding money), what happened? ... you could yell a nasty comment about someone's mother and the poor woman might actually hear it on the other side of the arena. There were no actual fans in attendance. Was it the product? Possibly. But the crowds were there for free, they just didn't want to pony up after a while.

 

The Duke-Maryland comment is irrelevant, because it was standing room only. That's all that Cameron Indoor Stadium holds. Understandable mistake.

 

People hate pessimism, or as I like to call it, realism, and that's fine. But I feel like even if you went to that Siena game with 7,000 people, and actually made them write down or answer the following, the numbers would be very suprising:

 

1.) Are they alumni/family/students or are they general public?

 

I have a feeling the answer to #2 would be resoundingly alumni/family/students. And as we have discussed before, all the UAlbany alums move back downstate after graduation, hence that is most of the problem (along with the student problem which has been well documented). And the fact it would be skewed in that direction is fine, but that just happens to be a problem at UAlbany - many alums move away or aren't interested because we don't play any of the same schools we played when they were here. I don't call that pessimism, that's a fact in my mind.