WyoBrandX wrote:Cowboy Junky wrote:Two things though:
1. A lot of those companies will be staffing with Wyoming grads.
2. If you put a good product on the floor, the out of town locals will go watch it. That's how you make new fans.
It's not going to make a huge difference, but it will make a substantial difference with a good product.
Something has always bugged me about our attendance. In the late 80's, the AA used to be jammed packed every game. They saw the need for 15k seats in the AA then.
In the 70's, they saw the need to expand the stadium to 35k and did it. The attendances were higher at football. Laramies population was 23k in 70's. Cheyenne was 41k.
(ref:
http://eadiv.state.wy.us/demog_data/cntycity_hist.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)
Where did all the fans come from? What happened to them? The populations are larger now. Attendances are lower.
The fans that were going then are still going now. Just the people younger than them aren't going.
In all honesty, it seems that university fan bases are generally made up of 25 to 50 year olds (people who have money, and aren't poop, have their stuff figured out, and aren't too old to go).
If you look around the AA or War Memorial, it seems like the people who went to watch the elite teams in the late 80s are still going. There's them, then the students.
Why don't we have that strong fan base of younger and middle aged adults?
I know these are very generalized statements, and not official numbers and stats, but seriously look around the AA next time you're at a game, and see the lack of middle aged fans.
People talk about students being the life of the stadium or whatever, but we don't have the money to go to bowl games and MWC Tourneys.
Maybe it goes back to what someone else has said about Wyoming wanting to keep its young people here, but failing to do so. Getting a UW degree, then getting a job somewhere more than 4 hours away from UW. Maybe that's where our fanbase is (out of state)... the fans that make the make up (or don't make up) the game attendance.
If you ever need to laugh, just remember there was some idiot who wanted Bohl fired after 2 seasons.