Question for the 2004 season:

[TheBisonator]

What do you think the game attendances will be like?

I think we need to step up our attendance. I think that if we're able to draw 14,000-15,000 per game this season, that it'll send a message to I-AA that we belong in the top tier of I-AA schools, and not the middle of the pack. Of course winning the conference championship will help too, but you gotta back it up with fan support and revenue.

It kinda made me mad last year that we saw a huge drop in attendance in the last two games (SD and Concordia-SP), and that we could have potentially seen an average attendance of over 13,000 last season. I mean, 7,045 is NOT an acceptable showing for a Bison football game. That's the type of crowd that goes to see a UMD (and maybe UND) game. I think we need to see a minimum of 12,000 butts in the FFD seats this season for the worst-attended game. Let's also see if we can get close to a sellout for the SUU (Homecoming) and Cal-Poly games.

[roadwarrior]

The first 3 games will most likely be night games, which always attract larger crowds. Having no home games in November will eliminate the deer hunting conflict. It comes down to the 2 GWFC home games in October along with Northwestern State also in October. I hope to see a good marketing effort to increase the fans at the games.

All of the teams scheduled for home games this season will be making their first Fargodome appearance. Only Cal-Poly has been to Fargo before. Lets welcome them all with lots of fans and lots of enthusiasm.

[airmail]

roadwarrior is right on. Marketing is going to be the key for successful attendence. Once the community fully embraces the D-I move and makes Bison football the "place to be", game attendence won't be a problem.

[Tatanka]

I think we need to see a minimum of 12,000 butts in the FFD seats this season for the worst-attended game.

Not to be picky (I agree wholeheartedly) but how nice would it be to have 12000 people at the game and 0 butts in the seats?

[whatever_]

Amen to that. I hope the D1 move will bring some more fire to the fans.

Way too many people there just to have something to do on a Saturday.

[Hammerhead]

NDSU's average attendance last year was higher than over 3/4 of the D-1AA schools.

http://www.ncaa.org/stats/football/attendance/2003/2003footballattendance.pdf

[roadwarrior]

Here is the average home attendence for last season for our upcoming opponents:

Valparaiso 2244
UNC 5746
MT-Tech ????
Carson-Newman 3825
Nicholls 7647
SDSU 5547
Southern Utah 5589
Cal Poly 6700
Northwestern St 10707
Weber St 7285
UC Davis 6080

Our home attendence last season was 11567, which was tops in D-II. It would have been #23 in D-IAA.

[roadwarrior]

Fall 2004 semester starts Aug 24th, so the students will be on campus for the home opener, which is good.

[Tatanka]

They are already doing a decent job of promoting ticket sales, too. The bit about $5/seat for groups of 100 or more--wouldn't it be nice to see all the seats full?