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Will we see a sell out game this season at Skelly Field?

I can't fault someone for coming to tailgating and pregame activities and then leaving to watch it at home. The games are for the TV audience with excessive TV timeouts that really kill the flow of the game. Don't tell me that the TV audience isn't more important than people at the stadium because I remember standing in the rain at 2:30 a.m. watching the guy in the red hat stand on the field for a TV timeout. That was ridiculous and sent a message to me about who really matters.

In order to get 30K into the stadium it will take the trifecta of things to get it done. First, a consistently good team (more than one season) and improving. Second, a quality opponent from either a nationally respected team and/or a really good conference rival competing for the championship against Tulsa. Preferably Houston because everybody hates them. Third, the pregame atmosphere needs to be something special that has a reputation around town for being a really fun time. I really like the way things are headed in the pregame department and the components are there if we start drawing more people.

I think we sell out against OSU regardless.
But the majority of them will be wearing that retina burning orange that’s makes me physically ill seeing it for too long. Plus the coordinated waving...makes me dizzy. And the circus music school song. I keep waiting for the line of elephants to trot out with the trunks holding the tails of the ones in front and Grundy to wear Bozo shoes to match the song.
 
KU, k st, I st, vandy, duke, so miss, wake, rutgers, syracuse, pitt, indiana, purdue, boisie, col st, fresno, cal, org st, army, airforce,
 
Some angry posts for just saying I don’t like sitting in a stadium for 4 hours anymore, it’s boring. When I was able to pick and choose which parts I went in to watch I would go. So yeah I will take my happy fatass down the street to enjoy the best part of college football that being tailgating then going home to watch the games. I also plan on going to Texas and Arkansas and doing the same thing. Will go enjoy the tailgates then go watch the games at a bar. So I guess that makes me a douchebag so be it. My opinion would be just make the whole campus GA on gamedays and charge $10 to all non students who don’t have a ticket. Then let people walk in and out wherever they want. Make every game like a festival.
 
Some teams struggle, but other teams seem to be able to schedule P5 teams with small stadiums.

Boise State manages to get P5 schools to their 36k seat stadium. On their upcoming schedules they home games with Florida State, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Michigan State, Oregon, and Washington State (as well as BYU, UConn, Houston, Cincinnati, and East Carolina). Most appears to be home and homes. But they are might Boise State, sure...

Uconn has Illinois, NC State and Boston College on their future home slate (40k seat stadium). Northern Illinois has a 24k seat stadium, they have scheduled Utah, BYU and Vandy... as well as a tentative with Maryland. Charlotte (stadium seats less than 20k) has Duke, Maryland, and North Carolina on the schedule. Central Michigan only has a 30k seat stadium and Kansas is playing there this year... why do we think Tulsa can't lure Kansas down here?

If we keep our brand up for a few years, you'd think KState, Minnesota, Iowa State, Texas Tech, Colorado, etc. would be happy to schedule us. It would be seen as a solid game on their schedule, within traveling distance of their fans, and a game they *should* win (in their minds, anyway). I hate to see Tulsa thinking we just can't run with our peers.

http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/aac/tulsa-golden-hurricane.php
 
Some angry posts for just saying I don’t like sitting in a stadium for 4 hours anymore, it’s boring. When I was able to pick and choose which parts I went in to watch I would go. So yeah I will take my happy fatass down the street to enjoy the best part of college football that being tailgating then going home to watch the games. I also plan on going to Texas and Arkansas and doing the same thing. Will go enjoy the tailgates then go watch the games at a bar. So I guess that makes me a douchebag so be it. My opinion would be just make the whole campus GA on gamedays and charge $10 to all non students who don’t have a ticket. Then let people walk in and out wherever they want. Make every game like a festival.
It is not unusual for Florida State to have an estimated tailgate crowd in excess of 300,000 and still not sell out the stadium even during championship years. People travel from all over the country to see old friends and enjoy the atmosphere. Many sir in tents outside the stadium and watch the game. The football game is no longer the priority, even though it is the organizing principle of the weekend. Your ass may be fat, but it is not unusual. Whether such behavior helps or hinders the program or your life long affinity for the program I have no idea.
 
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It is not unusual for Florida State to have an estimated tailgate crowd in excess of 300,000 and still not sell out the stadium even during championship years. People travel from all over the country to see old friends and enjoy the atmosphere. Many sir in tents outside the stadium and watch the game. The football game is no longer the priority, even though it is the organizing principle of the weekend. Your ass may be fat, but it is unusual. Whether such behavior helps or hinders the program or your life long affinity for the program I have no idea.

This....the football game is often simply an event for people to get together outside the stadium and tailgate. OSU has 10-15k (at least) who watch the game from their tents and trailers outside the stadium. It's a social event. Not saying this is good or bad but simply making an observation of what's transpired over the last 20 years. Portable dishes have changed the game where it comes to tailgating.
 
This....the football game is often simply an event for people to get together outside the stadium and tailgate. OSU has 10-15k (at least) who watch the game from their tents and trailers outside the stadium. It's a social event. Not saying this is good or bad but simply making an observation of what's transpired over the last 20 years. Portable dishes have changed the game where it comes to tailgating.

This is why universities are turning to professional tailgate services and blocking off prime real estate for these services and pushing the general public further away from the stadium..
 
This....the football game is often simply an event for people to get together outside the stadium and tailgate. OSU has 10-15k (at least) who watch the game from their tents and trailers outside the stadium. It's a social event. Not saying this is good or bad but simply making an observation of what's transpired over the last 20 years. Portable dishes have changed the game where it comes to tailgating.
It's a lot easier when you have 10's of thousands of young and young at heart alumni within 100 miles of the stadium.
 
Iowa state was our last P5 home game not from OU or OSU. I don’t know how we can’t get Kansas down here. At least it might draw some alumni in. I mean they’re playing @ Coastal Carolina for Christ’s sake.

We could have tried to get Illinois through our connections with Lovie. At least it’s a big 10 program.
Illinois is just the kind of team TU needs to play, very beatable but from a big conference. It seems every year there’s some MAC crap team getting hyped by people and when you say “why” the answer is “they beat Illinois”.
 
There’s former TU fb players who stay at their tailgate and never actually go in the stadium on game days so not sure what’s so wrong with Dirty’s game day choice. I find sitting through that many media timeouts boring as well.
 
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So it’s been discussed through and through... and the consensus here is that we all wish TU had better support from the city (casual fans).

Unfortunately after reading this thread we have a few alumni who don’t get it. We need everyone we can get in the stadium... but we’re gonna stick it to TU because they finally listened and allowed beer in the stadium and followed suit with 95% of other college football stadiums on the re entry policy:

Have fun sitting at home watching the game, but know that you’re part of the problem. But by all means, you do you.
 
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Look,

It’s truly pathetic not to go into the games, especially when you KNOW the school and team needs your support. Calling it boring sitting thru media timeouts? So I guess you never go to any sporting events live and bitch about all those too then right? Last I checked all sporting events have media timeouts. So sack up and relax and enjoy yourself. Grab a beer and some nuts and support the team. The school and players really need it. Look, if you don’t like football, then don’t go in..but spare me all the lame ass excuses for not going in.
 
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Look,

It’s truly pathetic not to go into the games, especially when you KNOW the school and team needs your support. Calling it boring sitting thru media timeouts? So I guess you never go to any sporting events live and bitch about all those too then right? Last I checked all sporting events have media timeouts. So sack up and relax and enjoy yourself. Grab a beer and some nuts and support the team. The school and players really need it. Look, if you don’t like football, then don’t go in..but spare me all the lame ass excuses for not going in.

I’m 100% with Pats on this one.

I learned at an early age that when Tulsa plays football, we go watch and support the team. Hot, cold, rain, even snow - we go to the game.

There have been a lot of events over the years that I could have and maybe should have attended, but I’ve only missed 2 Tulsa home football games over the past 45 seasons.

It’s not going to kill someone to go sit it the stadium for a few hours and cheer for our team. They really do need your support.
 
Look,

It’s truly pathetic not to go into the games, especially when you KNOW the school and team needs your support. Calling it boring sitting thru media timeouts? So I guess you never go to any sporting events live and bitch about all those too then right? Last I checked all sporting events have media timeouts. So sack up and relax and enjoy yourself. Grab a beer and some nuts and support the team. The school and players really need it. Look, if you don’t like football, then don’t go in..but spare me all the lame ass excuses for not going in.

First it was parking. Then, it was parking.
Then, it was because the stadium was crappy.
Then, the gameday environment sucked.
Then, it was parking.
Then, it was game times.
Then, it was parking.
Now, it's media timeouts because, you know, the only games with those are TU home games. :bored:

If you go to an OU game in Norman it's football for 4 straight hours. Nothing else. [pfftt] :puke:
 
First it was parking. Then, it was parking.
Then, it was because the stadium was crappy.
Then, the gameday environment sucked.
Then, it was parking.
Then, it was game times.
Then, it was parking.
Now, it's media timeouts because, you know, the only games with those are TU home games. :bored:

If you go to an OU game in Norman it's football for 4 straight hours. Nothing else. [pfftt] :puke:

You left one out.

The beer is too expensive.
 
Random thoughts:

-UH capacity is only 40k. They get big names there other than those big first weekend games hosted at the likes of ATT Stadium or NRG Stadium. We play there on a Thurs this year which is a PITA to get to so we won't be early enough for tailgating but the game day environment inside is a blast and worth the hassle to get there.

-Depending on weather, we're thinking about the Prairie View @ Rice game next weekend. Getting there won't be any more challenging than what Tulsans deal with. Band game should be strong on both sides. What sold my husband is a 3 hour pregame craft brew festival with 3 of the local breweries. $25 for that and a GA ticket. Couldn't care less about what will probably be a garbage football game I'd never watch on TV either, but some other fun reasons to go out in suffocating weather (as long as it's not raining).

-Interested to see how the new PA announcer is at Skelly
 
Oh save all your preaching, people. Jesus H. I never said I don’t go to the actual game. I simply pointed out that plenty of people do what Dirty Danchez does, including important people in the history of TU football. I don’t see you yapping about them.

Yes, I despise the barrage of media timeouts. So what? Maybe I don’t have the attention span. Maybe I have a bad back so I can’t sit in the stadium for over four hours.

People’s priorities can change over the years. If DD wants to do things his way, so be it. To each their own.
 
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No one said he can’t do whatever he wants... it’s just ironic that we have fans complain about people not coming to games and then our own folks don’t even go.

In the words of the wise Douglas Wojcik: “it is what it is”
 
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So I’m going to go ahead and assume those that don’t go due to media timeouts, beer is too pricey, etc..don’t go to ANY sporting events of any kind ever. Ou, osu, Thunder, etc..I mean it’s just too damn much right?
 
As I sit glaring on the little man in red with his headset and arms out... I often think:

The first conference that decides to take the game back for itself will gain a huge following.

More fans going to games.
More fans watching on TV.
Better paying advertisers.

If European soccer leagues can each make billions of dollars without constantly stopping the game to run ads, surely Americans can figure something out. It should be easy, American football has plenty of natural breaks where you can run 1 minute of commercials (score = commercial. Injury. Timeout. Quarters. Half Time). If it's not worth grabbing the remote to change the channel (or waiting for TIVO to get ahead and skip), the commercials are more desirable (and profitable). Then there's in-game advertisements, easily superimposed in 2018.

I'd imagine there would be many new fans who greatly prefer the experience of "football first" to 5 hours in the sun so the Big 12 can make make money the old fashioned way. If its a toss up between Iowa State - K State for 4 hours on TV or watching non-stop football of AAC teams... many would chose the AAC teams. Overall all hours of eyes on football would likely go up.

Heck, it's at least worth a pilot program.
 
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Which is why we have to figure out how to be Tulsa’s team rather than depending on alumni/students to fill the stadium.
I wonder if we could go to a place like Xavier and see how they do it (at least for basketball) and maybe carry some of those principles over to football.
 
One obvious thing is that they've only missed the NCAA's twice since 1995....

I'm thinking about making a new movie called Arena of Dreams "If you win.... they will come"
 
Win every game by 50 points, get a qb in the heismann hunt, and get on sports center.

Simple formula to bring the crowds.

An advertised hunh offense that lines up quick, checks off for 25 seconds, and then runs the same anemic running play 3 times before punting, won’t draw squat.
 
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Which is why we have to figure out how to be Tulsa’s team rather than depending on alumni/students to fill the stadium.
A good start would be having at least one African-American on the podium besides the AD when you do a press conference about OUR city like earlier this week.

Nolan was the first and last TU coach in a major sport to really figure out how to unite the city. The divisions were much greater at the time. Winning helped, but that wasn’t the only magic involved.

I don’t know what the price would be to get him back to campus for a day or if he would even do it, but it would be worth the money to pay Nolan to come back to campus and host a summit between university leadership and local black business, religious and community leaders and spend a day discussing how TU can do more to reach out to the black community besides the Kendall-Whittier project and reviewing admissions and financial aid policies.

#forourcity? I say prove it and reach out to everyone. Not just cops and those that grew up going to games and stopped coming. Otherwise the slogan is just talk and smacks of small time high school friday night lights, not major college football.
 
A good start would be having at least one African-American on the podium besides the AD when you do a press conference about OUR city like earlier this week.

Nolan was the first and last TU coach in a major sport to really figure out how to unite the city. The divisions were much greater at the time. Winning helped, but that wasn’t the only magic involved.

I don’t know what the price would be to get him back to campus for a day or if he would even do it, but it would be worth the money to pay Nolan to come back to campus and host a summit between university leadership and local black business, religious and community leaders and spend a day discussing how TU can do more to reach out to the black community besides the Kendall-Whittier project and reviewing admissions and financial aid policies.

#forourcity? I say prove it and reach out to everyone. Not just cops and those that grew up going to games and stopped coming. Otherwise the slogan is just talk and smacks of small time high school friday night lights, not major college football.

Gonna have to disagree with you... I don’t think any of that would make any difference whatsoever. I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of a racial conversation bc no one will win and everyone will surely be uncivil, but if the issue was what you’re referring to, it would have been solved quite some time ago.
 
It’s one of many self inflicted paper cuts over the past 40 years that has contributed to our current need for life support.

Tulsa has a growing black middle class. Why aren’t they coming to games? How do we get them there? How do we get them to come back with a friend?
 
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It’s one of many self inflicted paper cuts over the past 40 years that has contributed to our current need for life support.

Tulsa has a growing black middle class. Why aren’t they coming to games? How do we get them there? How do we get them to come back with a friend?

If that truly is an issue, TU may need to advertise in some fashion about their extensive efforts to be as inclusive of an institution as possible... this could include Jackie Higgs-Caldwell making some appearances at speaking events or other functions. With all the money that’s been thrown towards that initiative, there should be AMPLE time and resources at the university’s disposal.
 
It doesn’t seem to me like North Tulsa is the problem. We don’t really draw well from the suburbs (broken arrow, owasso, jenks, bixby) those are huge markets that we miss almost completely.
 
It doesn’t seem to me like North Tulsa is the problem. We don’t really draw well from the suburbs (broken arrow, owasso, jenks, bixby) those are huge markets that we miss almost completely.

I tend to agree. There will be more people at a Jenks game week in week out than Central, East Central, BTW and McClain combined. Add Bixby, BA, Owasso, etc...and that’s the large market we’re missing.
 
I wish we could do some kind of dual deal with the local “big” high schools... where people could buy a ticket to ours and get a half price ticket to theirs or vice versa. Some kind of cross promotions would be great.
 
I wish we could do some kind of dual deal with the local “big” high schools... where people could buy a ticket to ours and get a half price ticket to theirs or vice versa. Some kind of cross promotions would be great.

The big high schools don’t have trouble selling their tickets at full price. Most have waiting lists for season tickets and are standing room only on game nights.

It doesn’t help the relationship when Tulsa has conflicting home games on a Friday night.
 
Also at play in 1991:

OSU lost every game but one (which they tied) that season and they lost a lot of them by double digits.

Thank you Pat Jones.

Pickens' help has really helped OSU and hurt Tulsa. I kind of wonder if Pickens has something against T-Town.

Who remembers the holiday song recorded just for OSU that year... "O-TenandOne".
A friend of mine called the Buzz with a rendition of “Howard Got Run Over by the Big 8” after Schnellenberger’s disastrous season at OU
 
I’ve always wanted TU to sell single game and season tickets at those high school games. Assume there’s a reason why we can’t but anything to make it easier for football fans to buy TU tickets seems like a no brainer
 
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