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Worst Senior Day Crowd Ever?

BeachBumDeac said:
Lol there have been much more awful post thanksgiving crowds
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2008 had an appreciably smaller and more disinterested crowd than last night, despite also featuring two .500+, P5 teams.

6-5 Vandy at 6-5 Wake on a Saturday night after Thanksgiving in the frigid rain. From the AP recap:

A persistent rain, wind and a temperature dipping into the upper 30s led to a half-filled stadium and plenty of sloppiness in a game involving two teams that came in mired in late-season slumps.
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Also incredible to read this line in 2022:

The Demon Deacons (7-5), who closed the regular season with a victory that should give them a school-record three consecutive bowl trips.
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No doubt the crowd was disappointing but not surprising. We have a very small, very fickle fan base. Everything has to line up for us to get big, excited crowds - we have to be winning, the weather has to be good, the opponent has to be interesting, and the time has to be convenient. It is a shame, but that is reality. I was there last night but I can't say a lot because I have only been to a couple of games this year.
If we had won, say, 2 out of the last three instead of losing them all, we would have gotten a better time slot and we would not be on such a losing streak so the crowd would have been much better.
 
Our attendance is pretty good given the size of our fanbase. Easier said than done, but I don’t think we’ve done much at trying to grow our local fanbase or trying to differentiate the gameday experience in an entertaining way.

Really tough to balance short and long term given financial constraints though. (it would probably have required something like a resource intensive ten-year plan, and I think we’ve smartly funneled that money into facilities).

It is also true that we’ve spread our resources thin across a lot of sports, and tough to complain about that given the success we’ve seen.
 
IAppreciateIt said:
Our attendance is pretty good given the size of our fanbase. Easier said than done, but I don’t think we’ve done much at trying to grow our local fanbase or trying to differentiate the gameday experience in an entertaining way.

Really tough to balance short and long term given financial constraints though. (it would probably have required something like a resource intensive ten-year plan, and I think we’ve smartly funneled that money into facilities).

It is also true that we’ve spread our resources thin across a lot of sports, and tough to complain about that given the success we’ve seen.
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We haven’t done much? You must be forgetting the “I’m a fan” campaign!
 
Does the crowd size surprise anyone? Hell, it was better than I thought it would be. You could tell by people on both messageboards and people online FB/Twitter, that it was going to be a light crowd. Free tickets everywhere.
scooter84 said:
No doubt the crowd was disappointing but not surprising. We have a very small, very fickle fan base. Everything has to line up for us to get big, excited crowds - we have to be winning, the weather has to be good, the opponent has to be interesting, and the time has to be convenient. It is a shame, but that is reality. I was there last night but I can't say a lot because I have only been to a couple of games this year.
If we had won, say, 2 out of the last three instead of losing them all, we would have gotten a better time slot and we would not be on such a losing streak so the crowd would have been much better.
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This right here. Hit the nail on the head. We all know that margin of error for crowds and Wake Sports is very small especially for football. The fanbase just isn't big enough to fill (even a small stadium) on a cold night with a late kick with two struggling teams. Having said that, I thought the crowd would be worse (yes I know the crowd wasn't good to begin with).

Btw, the students showed up better than I thought they would (at least in the first half).
 
deacdixieboy said:
We haven’t done much? You must be forgetting the “I’m a fan” campaign!
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I have been told that only 10% of the students at Wake now are from North Carolina. This amplifies the problem of local attendance and makes it necessary to start a program to “recruit” local (within 50 miles) residents to become “butts in the seats, especially for football. I think jr high and high school students should be offered extraordinary group deals to come and enjoy a game including special game day events and deals for them. Wake seems to make it a goal to recruit students nationally and internationally which also hurts home attendance since probably over 50% of students end up living near where they grew up. If you observe the “home side” of the stadium during games it is an older crowd in general. They attended Wake when the NC % was a lot higher. This will also further contribute to the game attendance problem as they die off.
 
AlwaysaDeac said:
I have been told that only 10% of the students at Wake now are from North Carolina. This amplifies the problem of local attendance and makes it necessary to start a program to “recruit” local (within 50 miles) residents to become “butts in the seats, especially for football. I think jr high and high school students should be offered extraordinary group deals to come and enjoy a game including special game day events and deals for them. Wake seems to make it a goal to recruit students nationally and internationally which also hurts home attendance since probably over 50% of students end up living near where they grew up. If you observe the “home side” of the stadium during games it is an older crowd in general. They attended Wake when the NC % was a lot higher. This will also further contribute to the game attendance problem as they die off.
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The folks who sit beside me at home games are actually some of the rare instances of local fans. Attended UNC and State and have passed down Wake fandom throughout the family even though no one attended.
While I agree with you by and large, Charlotte still remains our largest alumni base (and I think Raleigh is second). Simply put, these people don’t come to games. I have tons of friends in Charlotte and Raleigh who haven’t been to a game since they were undergrads.
 
Interesting that at UM - ILL game the last 20 rows of student section was empty for two ranked teams and senior day. Although UM is a quiet 100K on a big game day.
 
tbpnwe said:
Interesting that at UM - ILL game the last 20 rows of student section was empty for two ranked teams and senior day. Although UM is a quiet 100K on a big game day.
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That stadium looked pretty empty in general yesterday. Attendance is a problem across college sports.
 
I think it’s just fatigue, unless your team has a shot of something great right now as a “casual fan” you are 10+ weeks into the season, the holidays are coming, minimal time to do anything outside with shortened days, tons of other sports happening, and so forth.
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
I think it’s just fatigue, unless your team has a shot of something great right now as a “casual fan” you are 10+ weeks into the season, the holidays are coming, minimal time to do anything outside with shortened days, tons of other sports happening, and so forth.
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It’s also the focus on the CFP. They make you feel like making a good bowl game doesn’t matter anymore when it used to matter a lot.
 
mako1331 said:
I mean I know I’m stating the obvious, but how are you gonna start a thread criticizing attendance at a game you didn’t attend?
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I live nowhere near Winston/Wake. I guess I can’t make a comment about crowd size/attendance at our last home game without being raked over the coals for it. Got it.
 
Rafi said:
The crowd really wasn’t that bad. Not sure what you saw on TV but it was an OK crowd and a decent student section. Definitely nowhere close to the worst senior day crowd ever. Not thread worthy.
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Not thread worthy? What are you, the Oracle of the WFU Message Boards?
 
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