Attendance figures

DawnoftheDawg runs down last year's attendance figures, and neither they nor I are surprised by what they show.

I do, however, think their ranking of the reasons for the low numbers is a tad off.  I suggest you click over and read the whole thing, but here's a summary of their list of reasons attendance was lower than it could have been:

1. Georgia is a football school in a football state.
2. Georgia basketball didn't do enough to connect with students.
3. The team got off to a poor start.
4. The home non-conference opponents were not appealing.

 Let me reorder to my preference and add my own two cents:

1. The team got off to a poor start.  After the first 5 games, who thought this team was going to be worth watching?  It's a fact that many of the fans coming to Georgia games are driving an hour or more to get there, and it's a fact that not many people want to drive an hour or more to watch bad basketball.  The poor start, along with an uninspired loss to Georgia Tech killed any chance at early season momentum.  I'm a pretty big fan, I went all the way to Charleston to watch the team, and while driving home wasn't even sure I wanted to go to any more games.
2. Georgia basketball didn't do enough to connect with students.  This has been a recurring issue during the Mark Fox era.  The head coach is also head of the marketing department, and Fox has fallen flat there.  Remember the positive press he received when he tweeted out that he'd be paying for students to attend the Vermont game?  Remember the excitement when students were admitted free?  We need more of that.  I've said here before I think students should be admitted free to all non-conference games.  You need 5% of the student population on board.  That's doable.
3. The home non-conference opponents were not appealing.  It was a bad home slate, and that's not all Mark Fox's fault.  Florida and Kentucky are guaranteed sellouts, and neither came to Athens last year. The bump from those two games alone likely would have put Georgia at about 75th in the nation in attendance.  Of course, the non-conference scheduling was ugly too.  All of the above will be rectified this year, and the attendance numbers will benefit because of it.
4. Georgia is a football school in a football state.  I continue to roll my eyes at this one.  Is basketball second fiddle to football?  Yes.  But you're not trying to fill a 90,000 seat arena.  Folks everywhere - and Athens is no different - have proven they'll turn out for a winner.  It will always be difficult to sell out on a Wednesday night.  But people will make the drive to see a winner.

 And that's the key, of course.  As I've said before, and as DawnoftheDawg says to end the article:

Just win, baby.

h/t DawnoftheDawg

Moving on (down)

Introducing the "move-down plan":

Athletic director Greg McGarity called it a “move-down plan,” which will allow fans a chance some time during the first half of games to fill seats closer to the Stegeman Coliseum court where there are no-shows from season ticket holders.

The goal is obviously to fill that lower bowl as often as possible.  My previous suggestion had been to do general admission for all non-conference games.  McGarity has chosen to go in a different direction.

I am willing to keep an open mind here, but I do have a couple of concerns:

1. You risk creating a mad rush down to the lower bowl.  It may not sound like much, but 750 people descending all at once could create a bit of a mess.  Part of the reason the general admission worked so well is because people's arrivals are staggered by nature.  Now, you may have 10 people eying the same seat on the way down.  Which leads to...
2. You risk forcing people into a walk of shame, of sorts.  Imagine the family of 5 that gets down only to find that the seats they were after are taken.  Now you have 5 frustrated fans headed back upstairs.
3. You risk distracting from the game.  Media timeouts tend to last right around 2 minutes, 30 seconds.  That is not a lot of time for hundreds of people to get up, gather their stuff, find the right block of seats, and get settled again.  That's ignoring the folks who fail and have to find new seats up top.  People who are moving around are not paying attention to the game, so you could have a couple weird minutes where only half the arena is tuned in.
4. You guarantee some poor schmuck is going to come back from the bathroom and find someone in his seat. That is what ushers are for, but it's still annoying.

Will it work?  Maybe.  The ushers will have to be on their game, that's for sure.  I'm for anything that gets people closer to the court, so it's worth a shot.  There may just be a learning curve for everyone involved during the first few games.

And, of course, we all hope this becomes moot anyway.  If there aren't any open seats, there's no need to move around, right?

h/t Online Athens

If the Steg is a-rockin...

See if you can guess what Mark Fox is talking about:

"That was awesome," Fox told Bateman.

If you guessed "Stegeman Coliseum filled to less than half capacity," please claim your prize!

In this case, Fox is specifically referring to the NIT game against Vermont, during which 3,951 fans packed the bowl and cheered on the Dawgs.  You know what else was awesome?  The 3,692 that came to watch the loss to Louisiana Tech.  And just to be clear, I say that totally without sarcasm.

If you have never been in a full Stegeman, let me assure you, it can get very, very loud.  The fact that ~4,000 fans created the environments that they did should tell you that.  So it's no wonder Fox and company are exploring some options to increase attendance and improve atmosphere.  In fact, it's about damn time:

“We’ve got a group of staff that are working on some options internally, on how we can capture that enthusiasm that was in Stegeman for those two NIT games," McGarity said Wednesday. "Is there some way that we can develop that general admission atmosphere. I’m not sure where that leads us. But we’re certainly going to look at it and see if there are some options we can do to kind of mirror that enthusiasm for this coming season. Because as everybody noticed it made a huge difference."

Read more here: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2014/04/03/3038511/georgia-studying-ways-to-improve.html#storylink=cpy

The cynical will say "just win, baby" and, of course, they are right.  Jim Harrick proved that a winning team can put butts in the seats.

In the meantime, though, there are options.  Try these on for size:

1. General admission for non-conference games.  You can't do general admission year-round because, as Seth Emerson points out, season ticket holders will likely complain.  You can, however, do it for non-conference games.  How?  Pretty much the same way you did it for the NIT.  You rope off the season ticket sections until 5 minutes before tip-off, you rope off the area behind the visiting bench for family and friends of the opposing team, and you let everyone else sit wherever they please.  There isn't even any revenue impact.  All tickets are the same price, anyway.
2. Students free for non-conference games.  Make it hard for students not to go to the games.  Get them hooked on basketball early.  Students will come to free.  Trust me.
3. Work the Greeks.  Mark Fox needs to start at one end of Milledge, walk to the other end of Milledge, and shake every hand in between.  Football at Georgia is an event, and basketball can be too.  This is called marketing, and it's a billion dollar business for a reason.  Engage the fraternities and sororities.  Meet them personally and tell them you need them there to support the team.  If you can get sorority girls packing the first few rows of the student section, you think you're going to have a problem filling the rest?
4. Create an atmosphere.  Set up some tailgates outside Stegeman for Saturday games.  Set up a fan zone for little kids.  Get people used to arriving early.  It's not as realistic for a Tuesday night game, but there's no reason not to do this stuff on Saturdays.  Entertain people before, during, and after the game.  Doing this kind of thing implies that you're actually glad people showed up, which is the whole idea.
5. Just win, baby.  Ok, so I had to include it.  Every fan base has its die hards, and every fan base has even more bandwagoners (where have all the Lakers fans gone?).  The goal is to turn the bandwagoners into the die hards.  That starts with winning.

h/t Seth Emerson

Attendance Woes

Basketball attendance is down in the SEC.

The most surprising thing about that list?  South Carolina's attendance is up 17%.  If you've watched much Gamecock basketball this year, you know that's a hard number to explain.

Georgia is up 4%.  Make of that what you will.  I doubt it has McGarity doing cartwheels around Butts-Mehre though.

There is one bit of good news:

Potential NIT home games could still impact the SEC average.

I guess that's the consolation prize for filling up the NIT...

h/t Jon Solomon