"CALLING ALL STUDENTS....IT'S GAME TIME," read Hawkeyesports.com's home page Saturday, practically pleading with UI students.
Attendance at Iowa basketball games is, if you haven't noticed, well, rather pathetic. It's gotten to the point where Athletic Director Gary Barta even holds press conferences for no other reason than to let Hawkeye fans know that Iowa still has a men's basketball team. Yeah, they've got uniforms and everything, as Jake Taylor from Major League would say.
From Carver-Hawkeye Arena's opening in 1983 until 1997, Iowa home games averaged at least 14,500 fans. From 2000-2002 Steve Alford's Hawkeyes drew over 15,000 each season. But since then, attendance has plummeted. The average attendance dropped to 10,761 last season before falling below the 10,000 mark so far this season. The troubling trend has led Barta and the Iowa athletic department to scramble for answers and ways to bring fans back.
On Thursday all UI students will be admitted for free into Iowa's tilt versus ninth-ranked Michigan State. That's great for students, but what about everybody else? The general public still must pay $22 to get into the game. That's too much at time when people, as Barta put it, have gotten used to not going and face a tough economic climate.
The most obvious and best solution, however, is for Todd Lickliter and company to field a better team on the court. Winning sells, period. Fans flock to fill Kinnick Stadium because they've seen consistently competitive teams for the better part of the last 30 years. The same was true for Carver throughout most of its history.
The Hawks are 42-41 over the last two-and-a-half seasons with few marquee victories. The program stands as low as it has been in a real long time. The fate of Iowa basketball attendance rests on bringing back winning basketball. If Lickliter delivers NCAA Tournaments, fans will come -- and it won't matter if Iowa continues to play at a snail speed.
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I had never been to any sort of wrestling anything, I've never paid attention to wrestling, frankly I just don't care. But the atmosphere and buzz around Carver during that meet against ISU was awesome, and I found myself wising it could be like that for basketball games. It'll happen someday soon though, I suspect in a couple of years Iowa will compete, at least on a level to fill the seats again.
ReplyDeleteWinning puts people in the seats. It's that simple. When it's below freezing outside and the basketball team has a home game, but they're only 2-5 in the conference, it makes it hard for students to have the motivation to go,especially when they have to pay. The Wisconsin game last week had a great crowd, but that was because there were free tickets given away. Hopefully the game tomorrow night will be the same; everyone knows a big crowd will pump up the players, it definitely did last week.
ReplyDeleteHow uncomfortable is it listening to Barta plead for attendance? Totally agreed with the Major League reference. What's interesting is the team clearly looks better this year than last (not more fun, but better), and still attendance is dipping. The record is poor, the weather is cold and the economy is bad. It's an awful formula for Barta and this basketball team.
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