AD Top 2 Objectives This Offseason

Topic

1. Recognize the 1984 NC team. (Not even any recognition around the stadium).

2. Ensure that every home game next year is a sellout.

First, our road schedule is a joke next year. Stanford is the only tough game in league. Plus Michigan.

Get the home crowd going and blow up the Oregon game the way they did the Stanford game in 2016.

Second, I don’t think people realize how close we are to having attendance collapse. Its going to be worse than 2019 even post-pandemic.

Of course the AD won’t do anything because they only care about money. Marinerization.

Think about it. By 2023 the roster in terms of talent will fall back to mid Power 5 levels. It will be tough to recruit with a half-filled stadium, mediocre team and Oregon and USC (with Urban Meyer) competing at the top.

This is how we fall back into the dark ages again.

No single game is that important but the Oregon game next year is going to be extremely important.

Replies

Your USC point is the major Elephant in the room. At our Rose Bowl I kept saying to everyone and Doogs and tOSU fans called me crazy for saying this. However, I do believe Urban Meyer will coach at USC eventually.

When that day comes the Pac-12 is over. Sorry Oregon fans and sadly UW fans too. He’ll dominate this conference at USC like Carroll did. When USC has a good coach nobody else can compete ever.

Does annoy that there is nothing in the stadium about 1984. I wish we’d have a special section for NY6 Bowl wins. List the Rose Bowl champs and then Orange Bowl championship team.

As for attendance, there is zero buzz about UW in general. Whatever little momentum(didn’t market it all) we had during our three straight NY6 appearances is gone now.

In my line of work, there are a ton of people who can make a lot of money on sports outcomes. Trust me nobody talks about UW football and basketball right now may as well not even exist.

Have mentioned this before. This program is in danger of a half full stadium. People say you just have to win. That is so wrong. We won in 2016 and there were still numerous empty seats at games. People would also go out and tailgate at halftime and not come back. We have a fanbase that is not devoted to college football with a ton of competition for the sports dollar in Seattle. You better win AND also entertain or people are not going to stay in those seats.
That’s why a Jon Donovan/Jimmy Lake RTDB offense is alarming to me. I watched the Alabama and Florida offenses and they are spaceage compared to what we are running out there.

3.

Stop allowing people to crap on your conference. If no one else will rise the the challenge then make it clear that the UW will.

Nip8 wrote:

Have mentioned this before. This program is in danger of a half full stadium. People say you just have to win. That is so wrong. We won in 2016 and there were still numerous empty seats at games. People would also go out and tailgate at halftime and not come back. We have a fanbase that is not devoted to college football with a ton of competition for the sports dollar in Seattle. You better win AND also entertain or people are not going to stay in those seats.
That’s why a Jon Donovan/Jimmy Lake RTDB offense is alarming to me. I watched the Alabama and Florida offenses and they are spaceage compared to what we are running out there.

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I had season tickets in 2016 up in the nosebleeds and didn’t really feel like we had a half full stadium. Maybe the ASU game was a little thin, but that’s about it.

We had our awful slate of home games that year too.

I didn’t say we had a half full stadium in 2016. I said there were numerous empty seats. And the alarming part is many of the empty seats were among your Tyee supporters. Was due to 1) awful game times 2) awful competition. I said we are TRENDING towards half full stadiums. The older supporters are drifting away. It is critical for UW to start attracting a younger crowd. You are not going to do that with RTDB and scheduling North Dakota and Sacramento State. Fans want value for their entertainment dollar. I stand by my statement of winning is not enough. That works in Tuscaloosa and at Clemson because there aren’t other options. Seattle is filled with options.

Nip8 wrote:

I didn’t say we had a half full stadium in 2016. I said there were numerous empty seats. And the alarming part is many of the empty seats were among your Tyee supporters. Was due to 1) awful game times 2) awful competition. I said we are TRENDING towards half full stadiums. The older supporters are drifting away. It is critical for UW to start attracting a younger crowd. You are not going to do that with RTDB and scheduling North Dakota and Sacramento State. Fans want value for their entertainment dollar. I stand by my statement of winning is not enough. That works in Tuscaloosa and at Clemson because there aren’t other options. Seattle is filled with options.

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Lol “numerous empty seats” against North Dakota? Who gives a fuck? The amount of fans in the stands for those cupcake nonconference games would be enough for a sellout crowd in Oregon’s shit little stadium. The UW athletic department can definitely do a better job growing the fan base but UW consistently has the highest attendance in the conference year in and year out. UW will never have sell out crowds for cupcake opponents. This isn’t bum fuck Ohio. People have other things they can do to entertain themselves besides going to watch UW boat race Hawaii.

Congrats Ballz. You just affirmed everything I said.

And I will add. Clearly you weren’t at the North Dakota game. 1) It was an embarrassing schedule in the first place by the AD 2) there were probably only 50,000 tickets sold and about 35000 people in the seats at kickoff 3)second half there were probably 15000 in the seats. Not how you entertain a dwindling fan base.

DawgDaze71 wrote:

3.

Stop allowing people to crap on your conference. If no one else will rise the the challenge then make it clear that the UW will.

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This has little to do with the conference.

Nip8 wrote:

And I will add. Clearly you weren’t at the North Dakota game. 1) It was an embarrassing schedule in the first place by the AD 2) there were probably only 50,000 tickets sold and about 35000 people in the seats at kickoff 3)second half there were probably 15000 in the seats. Not how you entertain a dwindling fan base.

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Nobody wants to play UW. You take the games you can get to fill the schedule.

1. Athletic Department gets with Jimmy, Adidas, and whoever else they need to and re-evaluates our entire branding and marketing. Compare with other schools if you need to. Identify weaknesses first and foremost.

2. Athletic Department completely reevaluates student and fan experience at games. Go over your cheap seats fan experience, go over the 50 year Tyee and tailgating experience. Everything.

Gameday protocols will most likely change for 2021 anyways so you may as well look at everything, and see if there are major changes that can be made with the current budget.

3. Coaching staff completely re-evaluates their recruiting process, bringing in third party consultation if necessary.

Nip8 wrote:

I didn’t say we had a half full stadium in 2016. I said there were numerous empty seats. And the alarming part is many of the empty seats were among your Tyee supporters. Was due to 1) awful game times 2) awful competition. I said we are TRENDING towards half full stadiums. The older supporters are drifting away. It is critical for UW to start attracting a younger crowd. You are not going to do that with RTDB and scheduling North Dakota and Sacramento State. Fans want value for their entertainment dollar. I stand by my statement of winning is not enough. That works in Tuscaloosa and at Clemson because there aren’t other options. Seattle is filled with options.

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In 2016 we had 43k season ticket holders. 5 years later after the best run in the last 20 years we more are less had the same. Then b/c of covid 1/3rd of season ticket holders wanted their money back after it being gone for 6 months (i.e sunk money) so as of today our season ticket base us 31k.

Obviously alot of them will come back, but not all.

I see it every year at the stadium. A couple thousand grey hairs time out, and we are either not replacing them, or if they did are people who are there for entertainment only (Marinerization) and are last there, first to leave.

Here’s where the program is at crowdwise. If it’s not a big name OOC, Cougs, Ducks, SC then the student section is 1/2 full and empty by the end, and at kick off there is 10-15k empty seats, sometimes they fill in sometimes not. Then at beginning of 3rd quarter another 5-10k people who don’t come back.

Anyone who blames the AD for this are just trying to find a strawman or shift the blame. If Jen Cowen (or any AD in college football) has the secret sauce to stop the decline of young people who have grown up not watching tv or sports, and have spent their whole lives looking down at their phones which is their form of entertainment then instead of making 750k like she is, she could add a 3/4/5 in front of the 7 tomorrow and go work at 5-10 old line media companies.

godawgst wrote:

Nip8 wrote:

I didn’t say we had a half full stadium in 2016. I said there were numerous empty seats. And the alarming part is many of the empty seats were among your Tyee supporters. Was due to 1) awful game times 2) awful competition. I said we are TRENDING towards half full stadiums. The older supporters are drifting away. It is critical for UW to start attracting a younger crowd. You are not going to do that with RTDB and scheduling North Dakota and Sacramento State. Fans want value for their entertainment dollar. I stand by my statement of winning is not enough. That works in Tuscaloosa and at Clemson because there aren’t other options. Seattle is filled with options.

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In 2016 we had 43k season ticket holders. 5 years later after the best run in the last 20 years we more are less had the same. Then b/c of covid 1/3rd of season ticket holders wanted their money back after it being gone for 6 months (i.e sunk money) so as of today our season ticket base us 31k.

Obviously alot of them will come back, but not all.

I see it every year at the stadium. A couple thousand grey hairs time out, and we are either not replacing them, or if they did are people who are there for entertainment only (Marinerization) and are last there, first to leave.

Here’s where the program is at crowdwise. If it’s not a big name OOC, Cougs, Ducks, SC then the student section is 1/2 full and empty by the end, and at kick off there is 10-15k empty seats, sometimes they fill in sometimes not. Then at beginning of 3rd quarter another 5-10k people who don’t come back.

Anyone who blames the AD for this are just trying to find a strawman or shift the blame. If Jen Cowen (or any AD in college football) has the secret sauce to stop the decline of young people who have grown up not watching tv or sports, and have spent their whole lives looking down at their phones which is their form of entertainment then instead of making 750k like she is, she could add a 3/4/5 in front of the 7 tomorrow and go work at 5-10 old line media companies.

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It’s appropriate to put 90%+ of the blame on the AD because:

**they are responsible for the value received versus money spent at a game, before during and after.**

A large part of the decline is that people understand more and more that even if you have the money for season tickets, it’s not a smart investment versus getting a few single game tickets and using the leftover money to do awesome stuff with your own man cave at home.

This is what the AD needs to deal with. The ticket/gameday prices gauge the customer at all levels. If you don’t live in the area there’s even more incentive to stay home.

The time slot for most of our home games makes for a bad fan experience.

Btw, even Oregon is dealing with apathetic students, the AD’s need to just give tickets to students for free or dirt cheap to get butts in seats.

godawgst post above is pretty spot on to what I see at games. Couple of thoughts: 1) If you really value your customer base then the AD has no business scheduling dogs like North Dakota, Sacramento State, Idaho, Hawaii, Eastern, etc. That is a valueless experience to the consumer. Historically we always had a non-conference schedule based on A,B,C level opponents. Now it is closer to A/B, C, F. It should be closer to A,B,B if you truly want to compete for the Seattle sports dollar. 2) Ditch the Husky legend celebration at the end of the third quarter. That’s when a lot of places do a crowd participation activity to fire up the atmosphere. Oregon does it, VA Tech does it. If it’s cool then people will want to be there for it rather than going out to their tailgate at half and not coming back. 3) If you have to take a crappy TV time slot, volunteer for the 9:00 A.M. slot over 7:00 P.M. Your most financially important people, TYEE, would much more likely attend earlier than later. 4) For god’s sake somewhere in the student body there has to be the next Rob Weller. Audition and offer free tuition to the winner. I grew up going to Rob Weller games and it was entertaining even when the game wasn’t. He or she would be worth their weight in gold.

The scheduling is tough. Most schools nowadays do not want to do home and homes.

Missing Michigan was a really tough break.

However, you have to work around it and make the game an experience.

Chest wrote:

The scheduling is tough. Most schools nowadays do not want to do home and homes.

Missing Michigan was a really tough break.

However, you have to work around it and make the game an experience.

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And you just hit the nail on the head.

The game IS the experience. Two minute hydro races, or Chevron having a student throw a pass into the cutout for some gas money does not bring anyone to the game, and if they do those gimmicks get old and boring really quick.

The cost of tickets for the OOC cupcakes is awful, but you can go on stub hub or any other platform and get them for a quarter of face value and it’s still not working.

UW did a flash sale when Eastern played here a couple of years and offered them for $10.00 to former season ticket holders and it still drew flies. When there are only 7 home games a year to see the hometown college football team a year with a population of 4.5 million people within a hours drive for a get in the door price of a movie and popcorn or a pre-covid dine in meal above fast food and you still struggle with attendance that goes way beyond the AD and gameday experience.

The reason

lol. Who should pay money to watch UW play an FCS team? That ticket isn’t even worth 10$

And no one goes to see the hyrdo plane races. They could probably switch to more flashback moments on the jumbotron or something.

LiberalArtsDawg wrote:

lol. Who should pay money to watch UW play an FCS team? That ticket isn’t even worth 10$

And no one goes to see the hyrdo plane races. They could probably switch to more flashback moments on the jumbotron or something.

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My ideal would be a full house (or darn near it) for any game at UW. Again we get 7 chances a year.

It is a red flag when you essentially can’t give the tickets away to watch them play.

For the people on this board we’d rather see the flashbacks then Hydros but we are not the customers UW is trying to reach. Vast majority of us will be there no matter what.

I just get tired of people blaming the AD for a problem that appears more and more to be terminal which is Husky Football is (or has) become Marinerized where we don’t have a strong and large enough fan base to consistently support a 70k stadium and that sucks.

I will say the AD’s tagline of “Greatest Setting….” should be taken out back and shot as it’s embarassing to see more games than not, 5 minutes b4 kick the team runs out to 20-30k empty seats.