OT - Nebraska Students Not Selling Out Football Allotment
I'd think at a place like Nebraska where there is not much to do selling out the football tickets wouldn't be an issue with students but looks like they have a schedule mirroring UM this year in meh and are coming in 1000 short of allotment. Thought their culture would be more like PSU where it is an isolated region and selling tickets would be no problemo but guess not. What a sad schedule - Minnesota is their prime time conference opponent.
Outside of a non-conference game against a Miami team that could be either mediocre or above average in 2014, Nebraska’s home schedule includes Florida Atlantic, McNeese State, Illinois, Rutgers, Purdue and Minnesota. Nebraska’s biggest games of the season all take place on the road at Michigan State, Wisconsin and Iowa. Nebraska does not play Michigan, Ohio State or Penn State this season either.
Student sales have lagged nationally in recent years. According to media reports, Michigan expects to sell 12,000 to 13,000, down from 19,000 last season. Iowa has seen its sales drop from about 10,000 to 7,000 the past two years.
http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/08/02/nebraska-still-has-…
http://collegefootball.ap.org/article/nebraska-has-1000-8500-student-tickets-left
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:21 PM ^
So Nebraska should go at least 10-2...
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:29 AM ^
Check out Iowa's schedule:
UNI, Ball State, ISU, @Pitt, @Purdue, Indiana, @Maryland, Northwestern, @Minnesota, @Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska
They could easily be 10-0, even if they suck.
I mean, Ferentz probably blows the Iowa State game, because he frequently does, but still.
I agree with you Iowa likewise has a very positive schedule but I dont see them at 10-0. More likely a very average 8-2 team going into those final 2 games. @Maryland is not a throwaway win like so many seem to project for every team in the conf and NW should be back to NW without the injuries. @Minn is also not a cupcake anymore. It does avoid MSU and OSU which for this year anyhow is a big advantage. For teams that are "meh" like UM / PSU / Iowa (which are all about equal nowadays) going on the road and beating a team even to them is not easy. @Maryland and @Minn is in the same ballpark as these teams right now, esp in their home domain.
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:25 PM ^
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:32 PM ^
Nebraska has a home schedule worse than that of Michigan.
At least there's Miami. (YTM)
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:54 PM ^
good god that home schedule is horrible...the away schedule isn't much better either. B1G West!
and the
?
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:30 PM ^
have anything to do with Florida Atlantic, McNeese St, Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, and Rutgers being on the home slate, not when they have Miami (YTM) coming to the Corn Palace in September.
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:31 PM ^
I don't see how people think Michigan's 100K streak is going to end.
Let's just say, God forbid, that the true number of asses in seats is below 100K for a game this year. I doubt that will happen, but do you seriously believe the athletic department is going to allow that number to get out?
It's pretty obvious they control the numbers when it comes to the announced attendance. Example: 114,132 at The Game in 2011. Team 132. The first year of Hoke bringing the "Team XYZ" thing here.
Also, in 2010, there were definitely some games that had more attendance than the Rededication Game against UConn, but being they were losses, I don't believe the athletic department would allow the most attended game in history (at the time) in our house to be a loss.
Unless it's blatantly obvious on TV from start to finish, the streak will never end. Even then, who knows, because there's no way in hell there were 109,114 people at the 2006 game against Northwestern. I remember those of us remaining in the stands lauging at that total.
I remember Carr not being happy about the student section's showing or lack thereof.
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:46 PM ^
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:13 AM ^
I think this was before the game. Not sure being it was a photo I scanned back in the day.
This was opening kickoff. I have a photo of the end of the game where the players are at midfield but you can't see the student section in it.
Definitely a weather endurance badge. 11-year-old WD even got there during warmups despite the horrific weather to stick to tradition.
Maybe Carr was mad the students filled in late and left when the hail/freezing rain started. I do remember my stepdad telling me about him not being happy, though.
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:13 AM ^
This topic comes up all the time, but for some reason there is always a lot of confusion. Attendance at college football games is not an actual count of the people in the stadium, but a count of the number of tickets sold, plus all the people given media credentials, field passes and such. That's how the streak survived games like '95 Purdue and '08 Northwestern, when a lot of people stayed home - the tickets had been sold. This is also how we exceed capacity for most games.
If we don't sell 100K tickets (and don't give out enough passes to make up for it), I'd guess the streak will end.
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:17 AM ^
I thought they counted EVERYONE. Including ushers, vendors, staff etc.
That's what I was told at a tailgate by friends who are ushers. Then again, they had a couple of drinks after the game so maybe that isn't completely accurate.
They probably don't have to pay $75 for the privilege of selling hotdogs and soft pretzels or attending to the overly drunk in the medical tent. Although, maybe we sell them (or the parent company) a $1 monopoly money non-seat ticket so they can be included in "paid attendance".
It would be interesting to know what the standards are. The idea is forming that if we could have the game also displayed on the back of the video board there could be bleacher seats outside the stadium in say the north concourse LOL. 120k baby!!! 8-)
I thought they counted EVERYONE. Including ushers, vendors, staff etc.
Yeah, they count those people, too. But as for the fans, they just take the number of tickets sold. "Paid attendance" is standard practice across all sporting events in this country. No one actually releases publicly how many tickets are scanned. It's expected that there will be some no-shows.
As for this:
It's pretty obvious they control the numbers when it comes to the announced attendance. Example: 114,132 at The Game in 2011. Team 132. The first year of Hoke bringing the "Team XYZ" thing here.
I do know, from talking to someone about this awhile ago, that they do make up the last one or two digits in the attendance figure, because it's hard to get super-precise. But the rest of the attendance is calculated using their "tickets sold plus people with passes" formula.
(BTW, Hoke didn't invent the "Team ___" thing. Carr also did it. I knew a guy on the team about a decade ago who had a shirt that said "Seniors - Team 123" or whatever year it was.)
August 2nd, 2014 at 11:47 PM ^
Not a whole lot of students make it into the games after the early morning tailgate. I'm not getting tickets this year, especially since Michigan isn't on the schedule.
Plus I can watch Michigan games on TV instead. :)
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:48 AM ^
As a younger college aged person, I don't understand why so many people would buy tickets and then choose to drink instead of going. You can do that any other time of the year. It's not hard to leave tailgates 30 minutes before the game starts and be in the stadium to watch the band take the field.
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:07 AM ^
Some of this might go away in 2016 when the Big 10 steps into a 9 game conference schedule.
August 3rd, 2014 at 12:52 AM ^
Maybe Lloyd was right. Play 10 or 11 quality games. Stop adding more games for profit. Let the athletes be students as well.
One way to add that 12th game is to do a crossover game between the divisions (championship weekend, play the 2 second place teams in the East and West, the 2 3rd place teams, and so on). It takes a little of the imbalance out of the conference schedules when somebody's cross-divisional opponents are bad.
August 3rd, 2014 at 11:59 AM ^
But also not realistic. No other conference does it. It would likely throw some of our bowl tie-ins into madness. A four or five loss B1G team playing a two loss SEC team would be bad bananas.
Ummm maybe their all just broke. Or, perhaps, its all the talk about concussions, what with Herbie's hat precariously perched above them and ready to concuss the unlucky fan at any time during the game.
The thing is just that no one wants to see garbage games anymore when they're all available on tv easily. Why should anyone go through all that hastle and pay all that money to see a game where you know what the end result is going to be?
It also doesn't help that Nebraska hasn't won a conference title in 15 years and Michigan 10.
Agreed. Whatever scheduling algorithm Brandon was speaking of in the Wojo article sucks. They should have went to a hedge fund and asked them to do it, they'd probably have produced a better result in a week of programming (if that).
I see so many schedules now that are incredibly beneficial 1 year only to be incredibly difficult the next (difficult by Big 10 standards). And there are teams (I dont remember which ones, but 1 of the bottom dwellars) that has a schedule something like Wisconsin, Neb, UM, OSU, Iowa as their slate...
MSU, Purdue, Maryland, Rutgers, NW, and maybe PSU and Wisconsin are the only teams with interesting home slates. Even worse than Iowa has to be Indiana: Indiana State, Maryland, North Texas, MSU, PSU, and Purdue, plus they have to play @ Bowling Green.
Those games that have been mentioned in this post and in many other posts in the past questioning the accuracy of the announced attendance when empty seats are plainly seen, especially in poor weather conditions, Michigan counts all tickets that have been sold (whether the spectator shows up or not), players, coaches, team staff, referees, bands, media, stadium staff, concession workers, security personnel, medics -- EVERYONE who is within the boundaries of the stadium gates -- in the announced attendance. This is why a 109,901-seat stadium can hold more than 115,000, or anything greater than 100,000 when several seats are empty.
Perhaps this year a new catagory can be added to the count list: Tickets that have been given away.
August 3rd, 2014 at 10:51 PM ^