RMU Game Attendance

[Bisonguy]

Should be interesting to see what everyone thinks the attendance numbers will be for this saturday-

A few attendance factors:

First playoff game in the Fargodome
First home playoff game in 20 years
First playoff for football since the move to DI
First playoff game in 10 years
Turkey Day Weekend
How many of those blue seats will show up?

[NWNDBison]

This is one reason why the Bison get to host the first round:

"NDSU submitted a bid of $100,000 to the NCAA, which is $70,000 more than the required minimum. Taylor said the school needs to sell about 9,000 tickets to reach the NCAA bid. Host teams are not selected until the entire playoff field is set, O’Day said."

It's a lot of money, but hey, North Dakota State will easily sell 9000 tickets by Mon. afternoon. When I saw the statistic that Robert Morris had a total home attendance figure of 13000+, I thought, "Hey, not bad." Then I noticed it was TOTAL home attendance, not AVERAGE home attendance. With 5 home games, that's less than 2800/game. If Robert Morris made a bid, they wouldn't be able to afford much more than the minimum of $30,000.

http://www.inforum.com/event/article.../group/Sports/

[North Side]

It now costs students to come to the game.... most of us didn't even come when it was free... general public will have to really pick it up if we want to even get close to 17,000. plus its thanksgiving weekend alot of students are going home

[BisonNeil]

I said in another thread that I figure there will be about 15k and just about got my head taken off. But, for the very reason stated, turkey weekend and no students. I think 15k will be about right. We only had 13-14k for the SIU and SDSU games, so my guesstimate is probably a tad high.

[Gully]

I guess between 16,000 and 17,000. There will be some different people that come out of the woodwork for this that will somewhat make up for fewer students.

[Bisonguy]

I voted 14-15,000 (14,853 to be exact). I think Turkey Day will have a pretty decent effect on the students (maybe, maybe 1k???), although there will be more single game types showing up. I know one of my co-workers didn't make it to any games(was going to go to SDSU but drank too much the first deer weekend), but told his two sons that they would go if they Bison made the playoffs.

Any weekend other than Turkey Day weekend, I'd expect at least16k.

Hopefully I'm completely wrong and there's 1,000 SRO tickets sold and everyone wears their intimidating yellow shirts (including PL).

[ISXBISON]

If we can't sell out the 1st home playoff game in the dome's history and first in Fargo in about 20yrs that's pretty sad...

[Bison"FANatic"]

It will be interesting to see how it turns out for numbers. OK this is not talking students but we keep saying quite a few people will be out of town for Thanksgiving but Fargo Metro is a large area. There are going to also be quite a few people and alumni back to Town for the Holiday. What better way to spend it but to take in a playoff game. Just trying to put a positive spin on it.

[BisonBabe]

I am going to shoot for the moon and say 19,000+ as I really believe that everyone will show up and support the team. Be optimistic gang and believe in the Herd!!

[roadwarrior]

Depends on the marketing effort.