Nick Saban Goes Full "Crabby Baby Boomer who Needs a Nap" about Student Attendance

I mean there showing up just leaving early because the games are blowouts. I don’t see an issue here. Nobody ever stays in a blowout even before hd tv and dvrs 

Heard Stan Van Gundy of all people chiming in on one of the ESPN talking head shows, he was like "you want them to show? Play Notre Dame not Louisiana-Lafayette"

At home I have beer, tons of food, a wife who brings me food and beer, a bathroom that is five paces from my couch, a 110" projector, and wifi access during the commercial breaks. I've honestly considered selling most of my tickets and only holding onto the big games. Going to the crappy games like WMU is starting to feel like a chore.

Alabama's home slate, truly Wisconsin-level scheduling right here:

Arkansas St.

Texas A&M

Louisiana

Missouri

Miss. State

Citadel

Auburn

Stop scheduling schools like The Citadel in mid-November!

Strangely, he has no opinion on cheating, however, and buying all the best players in the country every....single.....year.

While $15 hot dogs are a joke and don't help at all, let's also note that we're dealing with a couple generations now that prefer to be inside on their electronics rather than outside.

Strange as it may seem, teams that become something of a dynasty tend to have this happen.  Locally, we can look to the dominant Red Wings teams of the late 90's and early '00's.  The Joe was the place to be in the mid to late 90's as the Wings Dynasty was building.  Then after the huge amount of success over a number of seasons people simply stopped going to regular season games....then even early rounds of the playoffs were poorly attended.  The expectations were that the team would win anyhow and only games of the highest of importance were worthy of attending.

Now there are a multitude of other factors at play here which many posts have addressed, as well, but I suspect their fans would show up in much bigger numbers if they thought for even a second that the game was going to be competitive.

They should try night starts for the body bag games. The Louisiana-Whatever State College game started at 11am Central - the hottest part of the day. I complain about our student section, but I'm not sitting through that.

Alabama plays two ranked opponents this year. The first of those games is in Week 10. There's your problem.

Attendance at all sports is going to continue to plummet.

Basketball, hockey, and baseball are due for massive drops. Too many damn games.

I'd be curious to see how many of the non-students didn't show up either.  As the one WSJ article showed, basically every team in America is way overreporting actual attendance by claiming those who bought the tickets instead of how many were scanned entering the stadium.  

$$$$

How much are Alabama season tickets now? How much were they when Coach Bear Houndstooth was there? Add that to bloated tuitions that turn students into indentured servants for loan companies for decades afterward and, yeah, I get it.

Blame the ever increasing costs of attendance, and blame the chase for dollars making the live experience miserable with infinite media timeouts.  If i'm at a bar or my couch I can drink and do something else during the commercial-kickoff-commercial sequences.  It's not hard to understand: when you're charging more for a lower quality product, less people will buy.  Basic economics. 

Well look at that...demand for CFBgames is not inelastic.  AD's and corporate sponsors and network partners cant foist increase over increase upon increase on to fans, and continue raking in their dollars while the sheep walk through the turnstiles. Almost as if, not only are consumers intelligent enough to not blindly let their loyalties be preyed upon, but are capable of a cost benefit analysis of their own and have determined that allowing themselves to be screwed (or not)  has no real impact on their level of fandom. Shocked, I say