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Why don't people come to the games

evilpoke

evilpoke

Well-known member
In the grand scheme of things, attendance at Wyoming football games is not good. Yes, there are tons of variables - population, distance, etc. that impact attendance that other schools don't have to deal with, but at the end of the day, only 20,000 people are showing up at the games.

I figure everyone on this board is either:
A. Season ticket holder
B. Cowboy Joe Club guy who just lives too far away to buy season tickets
C. Student
D. Hard core fan who has prior commitments or financial issues as to why you don't get season tickets

But what about fair-weather fan? Why don't they come?

Winning is always going to be the main factor - but even when teams were going 8-4 or better every year, attendance was still not much over 20K. Why aren't people coming?

Hate Laramie?
Hate the stadium?
Too far away?
Too expensive?

What do you think?
 
No idea, but the populations of Laramie and Albany counties alone should be able to pack the house EVERY home game, no exceptions. It's not like tickets are expensive, and the drive to Laramie isn't that far. I know the pass is ugly sometimes (I live east of Laramie, so I'm well aware of the route), but not being able to get 30,000 people in that stadium every week is embarrassing. Nut up and get to the stadium people!
 
Unfortunately...it comes down to winning. Period.

Most people are just not crazy about UW / UW Football / College Football / Sports in general (like the most of us here are). Now, that will change, if the local team is undefeated or close for several years in a row (see Utah as an example).
 
McPeachy said:
Unfortunately...it comes down to winning. Period.

Most people are just not crazy about UW / UW Football / College Football / Sports in general (like the most of us here are). Now, that will change, if the local team is undefeated or close for several years in a row (see Utah as an example).
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Exactly - and for bandwagon fans, it's also hard to justify spending the money on tickets, etc., especially in the current economy. For comparison, look at Colorado Avalanche (I know I bring them up a lot) who nobody expected to be good this season. They're first in the Western Conference, yet last night they set a new record in low attendance, barely getting 11,000 people. Their main problem outside of having the second highest ticket prices in the NHL is that nobody expected them to be good, so people simply didn't budget for buying tickets for this season.


Is it still free for students to go to games, by the way?
 
I live in Utah and they are fair weathered fans here. They leave at half if their team doesn't put up 50. As for Wyo fans, I don't think most are "fair-weathered", but winning always helps.

I try and drive from Salt Lake to Laramie once a year for a game. Distance is the killer in my opinion. However, you bet your @ss that if Wyo was flirting with the MWC title or such, I would find a way to come out for more games.

It comes down to winning and distance. When they win, the distance will be more likely to be overlooked.
 
I would like to preface all this by saying I haven't missed a home game in over 7 years, and would do everything to be at a Pokes game but......

It's a pure numbers game. The state has approx 500K pop. Most D1 colleges have that population within a 20 mile radius of campus. We like to think that Wyoming supports the Pokes, and in fact they do. We just don't have the population to consistently pack the War. It is unfair to expect the casual fan to drive 5 hours for every home game. Its just not going to happen. Plus tickets are cheap for one person, but if you have a family of 4 all of a sudden those cheap tickets add up when you are talking about 7 games, food, gas, possible lodging.

Winning does help, but in all honesty an average of 20K per game is very good for us. I don't know the numbers, but I bet the Pokes draw more people that call them selves fans of a given team than most schools. Who really thinks that everyone claiming to be a USC fan goes to even one game a year?

Finally the weather plays a bigger factor than we even admit. Its easy to say if the roads are open people should come, but some people aren't comfortable driving in less than ideal conditions and thats fair. Worse even is when the roads get closed (i.e. homecoming), but it happens. No one is to blame but the stadium just isn't going to fill up.

I would love to see the Pokes draw sell out crowds every game, but there are many factors that have to occur for that to happen. The biggest is winning for sure. If the Pokes were in the top 25 the numbers would be much higher. Its been too long since we have been ranked, hopefully DC finishes strong this season and we can crack the top 25 by early next year.

Go Pokes!!!
 
I'm going to throw this out there as why people don't show up. It has been the norm lately for us to schedule teams the majority of people don't want to see. Sure we had texas this year, but in seasons past the schedule included teams like ohio, bowling green, north dakota state, ul-monroe, and such like teams. Not really a whos who of ncaa football.

Then when the conference portion comes around the weather turns crappy, the holidays (thanksgiving) comes around, hunting season opens, just to name a few reasons that impact the attendence.

I'm sure we will have a full house in the up coming seasons with nebraska, oregon, and mizzou. Other then that it will most likely be the same old thing until DC gets the program back up and constantly winning.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with scheduling. We have a lot of traditional rivals within our conference to provide enough fan interest.

Here is my take as a student and someone who works for the university: People around here are not sports oriented in a football/basketball way. The sports people care about here are: hunting, fishing, climbing, skiing, backpacking, etc. This is the stuff I hear people around Laramie talking about doing on the weekend; not going to the game.

I grew up in Tennessee where football is a way of life in the south. It's built into our fabric. I grew up playing football, I had no choice! I truly wish we could bring an SEC way of thinking over to the Mountain west fanbase.
 
for me its the distance i live in Billings and we have committments but i still make it for one or two games a year but i think it is ridiculous that we dont sell out i mean the Grizzlies are a 1-AA team and a very good one at that and they get 25,000 a game that fact that we cant match that is down right embarrassing
 
I know why I don't make it down often.. distance, travel cost.. mostly. A direct flight from Missoula to Denver is $400+, too expensive for me to make a weekend of it.
 
There was good reason that the New Mexico game was not so full as noone could get to the game. I think the biggest problem is student attendance especially at basketball games.
 
I think as most people have said it comes down to population. I think if you look at the population stats of how Wyoming fairs if you consider Laramie, Cheyenne and Casper one "metropolitan" area we draw just about the same amount as any other team that has more people in a much closer area.

UCLA doesn't sell out the Rose Bowl even though they have 15 million people within 30 miles, so winning is a huge part of it. They aren't winning right now and USC is.

That being said, i think its still stupid to make excuses for not attending games if you live close and consider yourself a Wyoming fan. I'm currently in LA, and have lived a few years outside the country, but for the rest of my life i didn't miss ONE game. When I move back to the region I'm not missing another one.

I think some fans just aren't as big of fans as they think they are. I've read a few old people on the other board saying how they don't think they're going to go to the game because they don't want to see BYU beat Wyoming. Well if thats your excuse, you aren't even a casual fan. Most people just aren't as big of fans and its embarrassing to me as a fan that we struggle to average 20,000.

But we aren't as bad off as we could be. I still think we do very well considering the limited population of the area. TCU can't even sell out their own 40K stadium even though they have a top 5 team and 5 million people live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Thats sad. They have a lot more competition down there, (Big 12, Pro sports, etc.) but come one TCU fans! They have a great team.
 
I watched Wyoming play UTEP in a packed stadium with the game on ABC in 1988. Nobody came because they thought UTEP was any good (UW won by 50 or so). They came because it clinched the WAC title for the Pokes. Bottom line.....winning.....I think the UTEP game had a bigger attendance than the BY'nerU game that started the season off. DIfference was nobody expected the Pokes to be able to repeat as champions that season until the UTEP game and we knew they would.
 
I work for a company that lives on weekend overtime and I can only say "no" to it so often and that is why my wife and I do a 3 pack. Another is that to attend a game and not spend the night in Laramie when commuting from south of Denver is a 7am to 8pm proposition.
Motel room rates in Laramie are relatively high to me. We came to campus the Thursday before the Texas game and all rooms were sold out so we booked a motel on I-25 near Ft Collins and it only cost $48 for that night. In Laramie the sub-par Super 8 will set you back $65 and a place that is clean will hit $80. There is only so much time and money that I can afford although I'd give my left nut to have the chance to see every game! We did attend the Air Force and CU games and have tickets to the CSU game too.
 
Am I seriously the only one here that believes that the ooc schedule is a flaw?? I go to a decent amount of games. Maybe I'm wrong when I say that a very decent amount of people that went to the texas game were there because of the team the pokes were playing. Would they have shown up week 2 if it was utah state? Prolly not. When I say that I mean people that aren't season ticket holders, or within a few hour drive from l-town.

I will say if the team had been winning the last few years they MIGHT have shown up, but nobody knows.

Hopefully DC and his boys get the team back on track and we can win on a constant basis. Then the "casual fan" will become like the rest of us and be truely full time poke fans.
 
Consistency!!!

If we won on a consistent basis that would help. I live close enough now. When I lived on the west side of the state why would I want to spend over 6 hours driving to go to a game where I don't know if we will suck it up or play well. Especially with most of the games on tv now with the mtn. I go to almost all of the games now b/c I am close but if I lived further away I would only be able to come to a select few games depending on schedule, weather, competitiveness of the team ect...

It isn't b/c I don't love the Cowboys but other things in life are important too. I think some people would rather stay home and watch three college games including the Cowboys than travel for a few hours each way and watch one game. Especially if the product on the field isn't competitive (the last few years in both football and men's basketball).
 
because u cant chant against mormons or get drunk is why most people i know dont go to games. the drunk in public tickets get exspensive\
 
Danmully said:
because u cant chant against mormons or get drunk is why most people i know dont go to games. the drunk in public tickets get exspensive\
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You must not know many people.

There are a lot of Mormon Wyo fans. Chant against the TEAM all you want, no one is stopping you.

Just be sure to not make any posters for the game. With the grammar, punctuation and spelling issues you have goin' on, my friend, we don't need them to be live in a stadium.

"Dumm mormens stay hoem with yur wivz"

I can see it now.

Stay classy.
 
thirtyseven said:
Consistency!!!

If we won on a consistent basis that would help. I live close enough now. When I lived on the west side of the state why would I want to spend over 6 hours driving to go to a game where I don't know if we will suck it up or play well. Especially with most of the games on tv now with the mtn. I go to almost all of the games now b/c I am close but if I lived further away I would only be able to come to a select few games depending on schedule, weather, competitiveness of the team ect...

It isn't b/c I don't love the Cowboys but other things in life are important too. I think some people would rather stay home and watch three college games including the Cowboys than travel for a few hours each way and watch one game. Especially if the product on the field isn't competitive (the last few years in both football and men's basketball).
Click to expand...

I agree that consistent winning is the key. If we break out one year attendance may still be down because people were not expecting it. If we keep winning then there will be excitement. If Wyoming was in a position like TCU - in the top ten and a chance to go undefeated and get in a BCS game - especially if there was pre-season talk of it - I think we would sell out almost every game. I mean if Wyoming is 11-0 and in the top ten and our final home game is against nw Michigan midwife school - it will be sold out! If we get to the point where we expect to win - where we are a pre-seaon top 25 team, we will sell many more tickets.

Look at cowgirl basketball. When they started winning people got excited and all of a sudden instead of 500 fans you had 3,000 then 5, then 10, then you sell out a championship game in 12 hours. The next year season tickets had doubled.

When the cowboy basketball team was consistently winning we averaged near 10,000 a game. and the students came out in big numbers. We camped outside to get into games despite the bad weather. (ah good memories)
 
Another idea I've had to try and pull in a few more fans is to involve the Wyo Tech students - they are usually the prime age where they are into college sports. Most of them aren't from here and so have no ties to Wyoming. If UW were to offer them wyo tech student discounts, you could probably start to get a few coming out.

Better yet (although I doubt it would or could happen) it would be cool to work with wyo tech and when their students register they could opt in for a UW sports pass, an athletic fee, or something similar, where they could get an ID to go to university sports like UW students do; maybe even use some facilities - weights, the pool, etc.
 
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