Where is everyone? I'm here at the stadium, where are you?
I agree the crowd sucks but honestly, they are having so many media time outs that with two teams that like to pass this could be a 5-hour game. I can't imagine sitting in the stands through this many commercials.
Night games are bad, but there are always schedule conflicts with anything.
Having every game on tv doesn't help.
We market?
This just an apathetic town in general.
My wife had to go into work yesterday, so I had an extra ticket. I called no less than a dozen people starting Friday evening. Of the response was that their significant other was home (and they didn't want to ditch) I offered to buy them a ticket too. If they had kids, I offered to buy the kids tickets too... Free tickets to college football on a great fall day, great seats too.
I finally found someone, but had to ask more than a dozen different people. There's something wrong with the demand for Tulsa football.
I can't say if this is beyond just Tulsa. But there's a big problem. Possible causes:
1) perception of the product,
2) lack of marketing to the right audiences,
3) networks being UNABLE to do smart timeouts (for good examples see the World Series, for great examples see Premier League soccer on NBC),
4) Game day experience not up to expectations,
5) People are lazy cows who don't do a damn thing anymore.
Absolutely true. I always set my DVR for an extra 30 minutes for recording purposes and I have still missed the last half of the 4th quarter in the last 2 home games (I like rewatching the game afterwards to see a different perspective than my end zone one at the game). I never get the end of the games even at 3.5 hours. There are way too many timeouts, way too many reviews for stupid things i.e. Atkinson letting the ball go at the end zone after his long TD...really? Why does that need a review? He was 10 yards from anyone crossing the goal line and even if he dropped the ball 1/2 step before it had no bearing on the play because no one from ECU picked the ball up...so at worst it would have been TU's ball at the 1/2 yard line. That wasted 2 minutes. Half-time is too long. NFL half-time is 12 minutes. College games vary. Why not just have a straight up 15 minute half-time instead of the 20? You get a guy that gets the wind knocked out of him and he's down and you instantly have a 3 minute commercial break on ESPN when the guy needs an extra 30 seconds to get off the field. It hurts ESPN too because now you have games going 4 hours, they only allotted 3 hours and have another game scheduled and the fans of the next game get pissed because they just missed the entire 1st quarter watching ECU take timeouts with a minute left down 28. I appreciate games on TV but ESPN/Fox/CBS are just killing the average fan with all the commercials, especially those at the game. People wonder why NFL ratings are down this year...unwatchable games, referees who think they are part of the game, and too many damn commercials. So, there's a score...take a TV timeout. Kickoff...another TV timeout. Gah. They need to figure something out like soccer. Run the ads in the background or have them sponsor your score bug in the corner. Keep changing them around.
None of them were played on Saturday, and they were all on ESPN.3 of the highest attended games in recent memory (not counting OU and OSU) that I can remember, UCF 2008, Boise 2009 and Houston 2011.
Anyone want to guess what they all had in common?