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Impact of Spring & Winter Break On Bball Games
Stupid B1G scheduling the biggest home games of the year during Spring Break.
Does it really matter at Michigan, though? Our crowds, especially basketball crowds, are pretty lame compared to the rest of the B1G. I really wish that wasn't the case, but the wine and cheese reputation that our crowds have is pretty spot on. It's as if people find it beneath themselves to actually stand up and make a lot of noise.
I completely agree with you. Our crowds can be terrible, but it'd be awesome to have the students here for those two games. The louder the better.
One way to increase your sample size is to look into games that were played over Christmas break. The students were on break then too.
A good thought, I shall look into that.
Crisler was a totally different place last year against Purdue when the students were on break. Essentially a neutral site game.
Let's hope the AD can find a way to change that this year.
OTOH, Crisler was rocking two years ago against State (the "Get the f**k off my court" game) despite the fact that it was during the break. A lot of it comes down to the opponent.
When students get season tix, do they include the Spring Break games in the package or are they sold separately?
From 06-10 the games over break were not included in season ticket packs but we had the option to buy them. It could have changed, but my guess would be that this is still the way it works.
and not many of my fellow students that I know of bought the Spring Break tix this year either. One of my classmates said, "Well it comes down to going someplace warm with my friends, or sulk about my midterms in the snow."
I think the prof said something like, "What do you mean? You don't like waiting until May for spring?"
Still the same policy. Students had the option to buy all the break games. From what I heard, a lot of students have bought MSU tickets. Indiana tickets were included in the seating situation and it is the day before classes start, so expect a pretty big turnout for that game, especially in there is a lot of hype and the athletic department advertises it to students. MSU could take a hit crowd-wise, but at the same time, the rest of the crowd is usually much louder. Expect the place to be loud regardless. Fans care a lot more about MSU than Purdue, Central Michigan, or Iowa.
They don't include the break games. Those are $10 a pop sold seperately...obviously the price isn't much but the issue is that students tend to overlook the fact that those games aren't included so they forget to order them. Hopefully the fact that it's sparty changes that, I know I ordered it the second I could lol
My concern is that people will sell their tix on StubHub, and all those MSU fans will buy them up.
I wish there was a way to pick what allegiance you can sell your tickets to
If you're talking about the student break tickets, you can't sell those on StubHub. They have a deal with UM that you need to put in the barcode so the University can tell which ones were sold to students and decline them....not that I tried to sell my roommates for a tremendous profit and failed or anything...
Students are buying them and giving them to their MSU friends because for this game, no ID is required to buy the tickets. You can find some on eBay too. They need to stop this because we're going to have Spartans in the student section.
hmmm I never thought of this, as I suspend friendship with state fans during game weeks. Well I understand why they don't include these in the student ticket package...but imo they should have put the tickets directly on the Mcard when you buy them (like all of the other tickets) orrr just put on the ticket that you need to at least show an ID with it when you enter Crisler
Well, the difference is that the tickets are specifically assigned for the MSU game, unlike other regular season games. Essentially, whatever it says is where you sit. So hypothetically, it would be pretty easy to sell to MSU fans
Students are buying them and giving them to their MSU friends because for this game
Who the hell would do that? I mean, how idiotic can some people be?
Because if you're more of a casual fan, you don't really care. I'm not saying this is going to be rampant, but as a poster above stated, seats are assigned, so they wouldn't even have to camp out and they just buy a ticket listed on eBay and be sitting front row (I found one front row ticket) in the Maize Rage.
Again, I'm not saying the Maize Rage is going to be 50% Spartans because there's only a small number of tickets out there, and a smaller number of students selling. But based on the number of people posting in Facebook groups "NEED 4 TICKETS TO MSU," yeah, people want to do that.
I'd be more worried about a meteor or comet's impact on a basketball game.
I think with both opponents in the top ten the place will be rocking. The losses were to unranked teams and there wasn't as much anticipation. Fans will show up for MSU and IU.
this analysis. If he thinks this is how you spend your time after every meaningless sports related question, he might not be so "available" to chat all the time.
Overall it took approximately 25 minutes to do, and I don't think it was meaningless.
If I had the tickets, I'd join the Blue Rage. Those old farts not making it loud enough were a big reason Michigan lost to purdue on Senior Day IMO.
I also think its important to consider that home court advantage is not just about the crowd.
The home team does not have to travel and practices on that floor with those rims every day. The fans definitely play a role but there are other factors. And I didn't even mention the refs.
I agree, that's why I refrained from calling it anything like complete, exhaustive, etc. I'm not exactly sure how I could even take into account things like the refs, so it's a simple metric for sure.
At first I was like nnaaahhh but the more I think about it, there could be an effect. The intensity of the crowd will be down from the ohio game (best comparison thus far this season in opponent) because the Maize Rage won't be at full strength, and it seems like this team can really run off of the crowd...especially Timmy and Mitch. Big deal? nah. Kinda sucks? yea.
I am a townie/grad and will be attending the 3 March MSU game. I will help pick up the slack.
Students don't get tickets to the Michigan State game on the 3rd, since it's right in the middle of spring break. Still, student tickets were cheap for that game ($10), so there might still be a decent turnout for those in town.
We did get tickets to the Indiana game on the 10th, so I would expect a pretty good turout for that game, student-wise. A section might not be filled in the upper bowl, but that's about it. Atmosphere should be similar to Ohio State (I plan on camping out the night before).
If so, I'm joining you. Otherwise I'll get there at like 6am-8am range
How/why would they stop you from camping out?
I just heard that the people who tried to do it for the OSU game this year were removed, not sure if that's truthful or not
I'm pretty sure there were students camping out before the OSU game, so I would imagine this game is the same. Even though 6 am will probably get you bleachers, I don't want to take the chance after I showed up 5 hrs early for OSU and was stuck in the alternate lower bowl section.
The MSU game may be lacking, but expect the IU game to be rowdy. The students have tickets, and it's the day before they have classes so everyone will be there. No exams to prevent them from showing out.
I'll just scream loud enough to cover the 1,000 missing students. No prob.
win both games. YES.
Another conclusion to draw, although it's already been made, is that whoever scheduled us this year did a craptastic job. Of course, this is all in hindsight, but honestly with @Indiana, Ohio State, @Wisconsin, @Michigan State within a couple weeks and then putting MSU and Indiana over our spring break, pffft.
Though Indiana I imagine will be a rocking atmosphere, also a potential #1/#2 matchup if Michigan wins their games leading to that one. I'm sure Crisler will fill up for it (last day of break, students returning, no exams/hw to really deal with, etc.)
Every Big Ten team had a gauntlet to go through at some point. It wasn't just us. MSU is in the midst of a stretch of IU, OSU, Michigan and Wisconsin. OSU has recently faced Michigan, IU, Wisconsin and MSU. IU has recently gone on the road to OSU and MSU and will soon play us. In a deep league, these stretches are pretty unavoidable.
As for playing during spring break, you can't really fault the league office there. It likes to have marquee matchups late in the season. We happen to schedule our spring break unusually early.
MSU got 2 home and 2 away games to our 3 road games.
Ohio State also had two of the opponents you listed at home so far, and while they faced all that you mentioned, it wasn't back-to-back-to-back-to-back like ours. There was a sprinkling of Northwestern and Minnesota to break up those games. IU doesn't have a stretch like ours at all. So, our schedule was objectively the worst of the top of the Big Ten.
Also, MSU's break is the same as ours. I don't really want to bother looking up everyone else's but your last point doesn't make sense. If the league wants late marquee-matchups, yet our spring break is early, what are you even trying to say? I don't think that countered anything I said, but maybe I am misunderstanding you.
Doesn't work that way. The league office sets the schedule. We have no control over when any game on the schedule is.
Well, the band will be there for the MSU game. Not for the Indiana game, though, but the alumni band will probably go to that one.
Championship teams play through challenges like this. Do I wish that Crisler will be a craazy environment for what is sure to be a nationally televised game? Yeah, but if these guys want to hang a banner, they'll have to play through this stuff and get it done regardless. Beat State. Beat Indiana.
I went to that stupid Purdue game at Crisler last year, taking my record to 1-7 in that building. A stark contrast to my 26-2 record at the Big House. (That's why I don't go to basketball games anymore because I'm bad luck.)
But even knowing the students would be gone, the atmosphere was surprisingly bad, even before a shitty Boiler team took control of the game. And the alumni pep band, bless their hearts, sounded just awful.
Students aren't the main factor but we should have the best possible atmosphere for the State game. Why the hell couldn't we have a home game against Penn State or Nebraska during spring break?
I could only go back through three years (as I have to work while I do this, as strange as that sounds), but at least for spring break, the trend seems to be towards attendance actually being better that average, at least overall (not necessarily students).
DATE | ATTENDANCE | SEASON AVG. ATTENDANCE |
2/25/2012 | 12,721 | 11,326 |
3/5/2011 | 13,751 | 10,951 |
3/2/2010 | 10,561 | 11,603 |
Last year, attendance was actually almost 11% greater than the season average, so at least in the past two seasons, Crisler has managed to remain full even during break. I was there for the State game in 2011 - the place was pretty darn loud despite Spring Break being that week.
I noticed this too, games over spring break seem to fare decently when compared to the season average. Perhaps it is a non-issue
I added some attendance figures to continue what LSUClassof2000 started. Crisler exceeded season average attendance 18 out of 23 games played over student breaks.
Keep in mind, though, that the season average is always weighed down by those couple of December games each year, against teams with RPIs in the 300s, that no one buys individual tickets for. We always seem to have a couple of games with attendance of like 8,500 and then the rest are 11-13K.
I don't think 3k under your average for 2 out of 18 home games will throw off your average significantly. It could impact perhaps two or three of the games listed, some were close to the average.
But you're cherry-picking by choosing that arbitrary date. We've since played Illinois at home and we're going to play MSU and Indiana at home soon. Meanwhile, we have no road games remaining against contenders.
You're basically complaining that our schedule was front-loaded, whereas teams like MSU and IU have a back-loaded schedule.
How is it not cherry-picking when you chose a cutoff date immediately before we started a very favorable stretch of the schedule?
Every contender has gone through or is going through a rough stretch in the schedule. Ours was a little earlier than everyone else's, yes, but now it's evening out. Incidentally, we only play 10 total games against the other contenders, while MSU plays 12. We're not the only team with a gripe.
The Big Ten has to find a way to give 12 teams an 18-game schedule. There are going to be imbalances in the schedule. As for whether our schedule was "wise," what does that matter? The Big Ten isn't supposed to favor anyone. It's not going to take pity on a team just because some guys graduated or transferred the year before.
Confirming everything people have said so far about tickets to these games, had to buy Sparty seperately but IU was included. Also confirming that these seats can not be sold online due to barcode restrictions. This is forcing people to sell them to fellow students who missed the deadline to order them due to the fact that the actual ticket needs to change hands.
Two years ago we played State at home over break and Crisler was absolutely rocking. I'm hoping the fact that this is an even bigger year for us and the increase in overall student interest will make it even better this year. My roommate and I were talking yesterday about how anytime we are playing sparty, no matter the sport, the crowd is more electric. It is simply a natural law of the universe.