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Article in Forbes on Wake Forest's elderly crowd at basketball games

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MichDeac25

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A friend of mine from law school went on to become a sports law professor. He writes a variety of things. To my surprise, he just released an article in Forbes on Wake Forest's basketball games being attended by a mostly older crowd. I don't live in Winston but I've noticed the elderly crowd on TV as well. I realize the students may not be going as often because we suck. But a further question is, does Winston lack a sizable younger professional crowd to attend games?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2016/02/10/college-students-the-missing-ingredient-at-wake-forests-lawrence-joel-memorial-coliseum/#250d852eb203
 
MichDeac25 said:
A friend of mine from law school went on to become a sports law professor. He writes a variety of things. To my surprise, he just released an article in Forbes on Wake Forest's basketball games being attended by a mostly older crowd. I don't live in Winston but I've noticed the elderly crowd on TV as well. I realize the students may not be going as often because we suck. But a further question is, does Winston lack a sizable younger professional crowd to attend games?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2016/02/10/college-students-the-missing-ingredient-at-wake-forests-lawrence-joel-memorial-coliseum/#250d852eb203
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People don't go to games when the home team stinks. It's true everywhere. If old people are still going it's because they're old and stuck in their ways and there's nothing to do in Winston-Salem. I can't imagine why anyone would go to a game at this point.
 
The entire concept of that article makes no sense to me. There are no students because we have a horrific basketball team and have had a horrific basketball team for most the current students' conscious recollection. It isn't any deeper than that.
 
Caveat: This post is #anecdote.

I have had season tickets to Wake basketball since we moved back to Winston-Salem in 2000. My parents, who are in their 70s, moved to Clemmons from elsewhere in North Carolina in 2006, have had season tickets since 2002.

My Mom and Dad have good seats in the lower level because they can afford them. Despite how horrible we have been the past 6 years, they continue to attend every game. With all due respect to my Mom and Dad, they do so because they don't have anything else competing for their time and there is still some level of enjoyment for them in attending the games (although I can say from their post-game comments that they are soon reaching their limit).

I have long since bought cheap seat tickets, because I am at the stage of my life where as often as not, I have a schedule conflict with attending the game. If I can make it, I am almost always assured of being able to squat in the lower level. Frankly, I have gotten to the point that the 4 hour commitment of my very limited time to see a game is just not worth it anymore, particularly when attending the game just ends up pissing me off. The last game I made was the Syracuse game, and I went primarily because it was a Cub Scout event (I am a Cub Scout leader). That game disabused me of wanting to go to any more this year.

Having said all of that, I think that older people attend the games because they have the time to do so, while the likely disappointment of watching the Deacs lose again is not enough to influence younger people to set aside other things in their schedule to go see it in person.
 
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Skip Prosser got the students involved by starting the student section in one end zone and tie dye shirts. What has Manning done to get students to the games ?
 
BiffTannen said:
Oh, and your friend's article is terrible.
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I have wondered about this myself. With the admissions office seeking to increase diversity, does that reduce the number of students from North Carolina? With the trend appearing to be Wake gets richer kids who can afford the 65k per year, a ton of great high school kids from NC are all ending up at UNC. Make no mistake about it, the top high school kids in NC go to UNC . These are the top kids in NC high schools. Kids who would be great WFU fans and alumni but for the price tag. I honestly don't know who will be sitting in our stands 20 years from now.
 
wfu22fan said:
Skip Prosser got the students involved by starting the student section in one end zone and tie dye shirts. What has Manning done to get students to the games ?
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Skip's first 4 years at Wake: t-3rd, 1st, t-3rd, 2nd. The tie-dye stuff was cool and all, but not sure it would've made a difference had the teams not been good. I'd rather have Manning spend his time trying to figure out how to win bball games than going around campus trying to get students to go to games and having pep rallys and shyt
 
Just fucking win. They will come.

Nothing else matters.

I don't care about anything else. Don't do new promotions, don't focus on anything else except winning.
 
BiffTannen said:
Oh, and your friend's article is terrible.
Click to expand...

It actually makes some fairly solid points.

Here's a game for you:

Request information on the 2nd row 'premium seats'.

Ask which ones are available for purchase for next season.

Based on what you hear back, ask about a potential price break.

Report back to us.
 
Yeah it's actually pretty pathetic when I try to get friends and other students to come to the games. Usually people just laugh at me. If we were winning, I guarantee this wouldn't be the case. The promotions are shitty, no one cares enough, we all laugh at the kids that stand up the whole game, the tie dye needs to go, etc. If you start winning, these problems go away and students will absolutely come. I've been a Wake fan since the day I was born and it's already getting to the point where I am almost too apathetic to go to games. I really hope that I can experience some winning basketball before I graduate in 2018, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
Very sad state of affairs for current WF students.

Some of my most fond memories at MSD were during the 1984 Final 8 run. Retired Meyer! :thumbsup:
 
My son is in 4th grade. He participated in the Skip Prosser Literacy Challenge. By reading 25 books in a specific time, he was given 2 free tickets to the FSU game last Saturday. In addition, we were allowed to purchase additional tickets for $10 a piece. When I went to pick them up, I was surprised that they were lower level tickets. We ended up paying $30 for 5 tickets with a face value of $45 a piece.

Bottom line- no one wants to go to Wake basketball games anymore
 
Going to my first wake game in 6 years later this month. Hoping for a good game, but mainly going to spend some time with my dad since we used to go to games together all the time before my adult responsibilities and [Redacted] happened.
 
What's sad is, after the hell of the last 5 years versus the good start this season, fans/students were just starting to get excited about a turnaround in Wake hoops. And then it suddenly fell apart. Gonna be doubly difficult now for Manning to generate any positive vibes next year.

Personally, this has nearly killed my interest in watching college hoops because I get very jealous of others having fun.
 
The Wake basketball crowd is buying like 80% of the world's soft yellow Polo Ralph Lauren crewneck sweaters one size too big.
 
Wake doesn't have the same loyalty or appeal to NC kids as it did a generation or two ago - no doubt about that. At one time, by design, roughly a quarter of students were from NC. I don't know if the NC/non-NC proportions are still the same but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the proportion of NC students has been greatly reduced.

Take that fact, throw in ACC expansion, and a craptastic men's program that is circling the drain, and it's not hard to see why nobody but senior citizens with nothing better to do show up to games.
 
LilburnDeac said:
My son is in 4th grade. He participated in the Skip Prosser Literacy Challenge. By reading 25 books in a specific time, he was given 2 free tickets to the FSU game last Saturday. In addition, we were allowed to purchase additional tickets for $10 a piece. When I went to pick them up, I was surprised that they were lower level tickets. We ended up paying $30 for 5 tickets with a face value of $45 a piece.

Bottom line- no one wants to go to Wake basketball games anymore
Click to expand...

The most important thing about this post is that LilburnDeac didn't already have season tickets for his family. We are losing the next two generations of Deac fans by not putting out a product students want to see or that alums can justify taking their kids to see.

This reminded me that I have no idea if the game tonight is at 7 or 9 and on what network. I'll only be watching with my kids if it's 9:00 game and I'm trying to watch while getting my youngest to sleep.
 
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