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Post by aggieblackie on Dec 16, 2011 0:46:11 GMT -5
I agree with you "Sidewiner8". Elon is not the answer in using it as a money game. We need to put Winston back on the schedule or play a good SWAC team that can draw. Some of those teams have a good fan base that travels. They would bring more than Elon who are only a hop, skip and a jump from Aggie Stadium.
Let us quit feuding about something that we can change if we stick together and voice our opinion.
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Post by The Professor on Dec 16, 2011 0:52:38 GMT -5
Alcorn still owes us a game. I doubt we play another SWAC school until they return the game that we are owed
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DECKS
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Post by DECKS on Dec 16, 2011 2:28:57 GMT -5
Our fans show up in good numbers regardless of who we play. We show up regardless of our record. You are contradicting yourself Decks and all of the people who said they wanted a full stadium. How else are we going to fill up the stadium if the other teams don't bring a great amount of people to our games. Elon is a waste of time for making it a money game. I have read a lot of asinine statements on this board and the one you just made stating "You guys need to quit being small minded in wanting opponents to fill up our stadium" is one. What in the hell is small minded about that. We are trying to find opponents who will bring a larger fan base to help us make money. That is big minded. I think I said I want to see Aggie Stadium filled with Aggies. There's nothing contradictory about that.
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Post by Aggie Monster on Dec 16, 2011 7:07:08 GMT -5
Sidewiner, he was calling the statement about them being racist asinine, not the idea of not playing them. i dont mind people disagreeing with what I say at all. Your opinion is your opinion. I've been wrong a whole lot, but some statements are just waaaay left field. This aint 1970. Yeah people are still racist, but the majority of a fanbase? OK, i'm through, let move on from the racist comment.
Just to clarify. I never said Elon would fill Aggie Stadium. The point I was TRYING to make is we got 17K last time we played them(yeah, it was a night game and we had just won the MEAC, but no reason it cant be a night game again. I think Mo Hicks was even on that team). It doesn't matter if they brought 500 or 3000. Over a two year home and home series you cant beat the numbers. Period!
As a business/program the idea is to spend less, make more. An Elon game that may bring in 18K and save us hotel, gas, food, etc when we go to them is better than bringing in 18K fans and then having to travel to Mississippi, Alabama, or Tennessee the next year. You just spent most of the money you made from the year before. Thats my point. Nothing else. It wasn't that they would bring thousands of fans. And they may surprise you if the game is hyped. Getting more than 1000 out of Elon is all gravy. Did you think I didn't know that? I guess I wasn't making my point correctly. And I've always been an advocate of playing WSSU, no matter what.
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DECKS
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Post by DECKS on Dec 16, 2011 8:46:49 GMT -5
Thanks Decks...i was thinking the attendance was pretty good! JSU would be good, but look at the money we would shell out, Travel, Hotel, Food. It would be a good rivalry but I would the revenue generated be beneficial or would we just spend it all when we go to them? as for preference of firing Phil before Eaves there is no question that a loosing coach should be canned before a ineffective marketing/sponsorship head. Eaves doesn't do anything magical in finding money games. A new face as HC would probably bring in just as much or if not more revenue for basketball. Just for clarity. Phil McAlpine is the Director of Development and Lori Dobbins is the Assistant Athletics Director for Marketing.
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Post by aggiebred09 on Dec 16, 2011 9:05:52 GMT -5
Just getting back up to speed with this thread and I see some valid and invalid points.
You know what trumps racism? Money & competition. I personally dont believe that Elon wouldnt show just because were a black school. But I can see the pedagogy of those that think otherwise. Let us start kickin some phoenix bootay and watch the KKK crowd fill the stadium. In as much as WSSU, Central, Shaw & whoever else you can think of will draw a crowd so will Duke, Carolina, NC State. The level of play determines the rivalry and like has been stated if we are about being a winning program then sooner or later our thought process on money games can and will change regardless of the white school or black school we play. (Honestly we sell ourselves short by saying only playing black schools will sell our our stadium)
Most of these responses carry merit, but lack business sense. In business you cant pay bills off of a dollar you cant catch (ie. Visitor attendance). While you can estimate that a certain percentage of the stadium will be visiting seats, the fan attendance and travel record of each team has to come into play and from a marketing standpoint that would be too much of a hassle to accurately assume that out of the 19,000 seats we have, elon will bring 500, wssu will bring 6000 so on and so on. That would be ridiculous.
If you want to sellout the stadium you focus mainly on the numbers that you can generate (ie Students, Alumni, GSO Community) Student tickets don't generate revenue so in as much as you want to sellout, having all 12,000 students at the stadium would be death to our bottom line.
(If we are known for selling out our stadium then opposing teams fans will know that if they dont travel to any stadium for an away game they have got to come to the A&T game)
Marketing to students is a waste of money, let SGA, COP, the Pan worry about that. We should spend our dollar where it can be matched. Doing whatever we can do to get PAID butts in seats.
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Post by marchingband1969 on Dec 16, 2011 10:42:35 GMT -5
Sidewiner, he was calling the statement about them being racist asinine, not the idea of not playing them. i dont mind people disagreeing with what I say at all. Your opinion is your opinion. I've been wrong a whole lot, but some statements are just waaaay left field. This aint 1970. Yeah people are still racist, but the majority of a fanbase? OK, i'm through, let move on from the racist comment. Just to clarify. I never said Elon would fill Aggie Stadium. The point I was TRYING to make is we got 17K last time we played them(yeah, it was a night game and we had just won the MEAC, but no reason it cant be a night game again. I think Mo Hicks was even on that team). It doesn't matter if they brought 500 or 3000. Over a two year home and home series you cant beat the numbers. Period! As a business/program the idea is to spend less, make more. An Elon game that may bring in 18K and save us hotel, gas, food, etc when we go to them is better than bringing in 18K fans and then having to travel to Mississippi, Alabama, or Tennessee the next year. You just spent most of the money you made from the year before. Thats my point. Nothing else. It wasn't that they would bring thousands of fans. And they may surprise you if the game is hyped. Getting more than 1000 out of Elon is all gravy. Did you think I didn't know that? I guess I wasn't making my point correctly. And I've always been an advocate of playing WSSU, no matter what. Aggie Monster, I agree with you that Elon should be on our schedule every year. The reason they don't bring more fans to the Aggie Stadium in part is the same reason a lot of schools don't bring their fans to Aggie Stadium...we haven't marketed the games to people at other schools. Hell we don't even market the game to our Alumni and students. I believe there is no reason why 75% of Aggie Stadium isn't filled with A&T fans and students every game. We have the false idea that "if we play a game at home, people will automatically show up." The "die-hards" will show up but we've got to get more fans than that. Now before you get on the WSSU or NCCU discussion, these games are rivals that we have a long history playing. I'm not saying don't play them. What I am saying is expand our pool of "rivals" to enclude Elon. Regardless of the Elon fan turnout in the past, they should always be on our schedule. They have a growing school (6,000 students), play in the Football Championship Subdivision, are less than an hour drive from us and play competitive football. How many other FCS schools do we have that close to us that we can schedule? Plus, I really believe with just some simple marketing ideas, we could turn this game into a big deal and the fans from both sides would attend. Just because something hasn't worked in the past is no reason to stop trying to make it work now. If you accept the fact that A&T has (and continues) to do a crappy job promoting all sports, then don't blame Elon for not bring fans. Blame A&T's sport marketing department for not finding ways to promote that game. We will probably get WSSU back on the schedule eventually but we need more that one well attended game. Let's do a better job marketing every game and stop looking for an easy option.
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Post by Aggie Monster on Dec 16, 2011 11:34:24 GMT -5
Last time we play Elon at their place the crowd was 10,500. We pulled in 17,000 at our place(in 2001 i think). What yall bitchin about? We aint getting robbed here.
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Post by Jesse Jackson's Side eye on Dec 16, 2011 11:49:26 GMT -5
to kind of piggyback off of what saabman stated: one of the things that I feel A&T athletics, and football in particular, has not tapped into is selling Aggie Football as GREENSBORO's TEAM. I mean yes, there are a number of schools in the city, but A&T football is the biggest game in town. tracking back to the WNIT game against Charlotte, their theme from their billboards to the team introduction video was that they weren't just UNC Charlotte's Team, they were the City's Team... I feel like we really need to market Aggie Football as not just 200 Acres of land off East Market Street, but the Entire City. Did you say something about MARKETING. That would require having a competent staff to do so. Great point though and a great idea. I see App St Football billboards in Greensboro. Damn Shame Exactly...A&T should be Running The Triad when it comes to Football and it wouldn't hurt to see billboards up and down the I-40/I-85 Corridors...like Aggiebred09 said "If you want to sellout the stadium you focus mainly on the numbers that you can generate (Season Tickets, Paid Admission, Students) and not worry about the intangibles (visitors)" If we play Winston, Central or East BumbleF#$K Community College, Aggie Stadium Should be at least 75% full (75% of 21,000 = 15,750 Aggie Fans) That is the cultural change we have to strive for... Alcorn still owes us a game. I doubt we play another SWAC school until they return the game that we are owed That would be nice, but if we don't have a labor day opponent we might end up down in Orlando for the 2012 MEAC-SWAC Challenge
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oleschoolaggie
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Dec 16, 2011 11:50:21 GMT -5
I feel like we really need to market Aggie Football as not just 200 Acres of land off East Market Street, but the Entire City. one way to do that is by bringing back a professionally produced local a&t football coach's tv/cable show. broadway is very articulate and speaks extremely well. he would definitely put a professional face on our football program. we need to get broadway on tv and allow the triad to meet this guy. i really luv the way he conducts himself during press conferences/interviews. one thing i've learned about broadway is that he's no dummy. he's actually a very "intelligent" man. he's the perfect "ambassador" for our football program. and on top of that, he can coach his azz off! back in the day, former a&t coach, hornsby howell had a very nice coach's tv show. i don't know why it went away, but i suspect our winless drought didn't help matters at all. i'd like to see it come back...
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Post by oleschoolaggie on Dec 16, 2011 11:58:57 GMT -5
i hate to sound like a broken record, but i just want to see us win games! i honestly think our attendance would take care of itself if we won games consistently. i have total confidence in our fanbase because i've seen over the years what we're capable of.
yet, i think the new fan zone discourages attendance from casual fans. but that's a whole different thread that we've already beaten to death on this message board. i also think when we jacked up our ticket prices, we eliminated a certain element of our fanbase.
and i'm with monster when it comes to evening games, we need more of them. evening games are more convenient for everybody, we should have more of them...
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Post by hollywoodswagga on Dec 16, 2011 13:22:54 GMT -5
Quite frankly the football games are boring we need to improve the quality of the experience for the fan creating an ultimate fan game day experience. I do not believe it is the level of competition, wins and loses or lack of marketing in the triad . It starts with the student section having an identity when they enter the stadium and with them keeping everyone engaged with the games. The atmosphere inside the stadium is what we need to think about changing first, we rely to much on the band keeping people excited about coming to games. Once that changes and fans have something to look forward to I feel that the stadium will be filled whoever we play against.
I know someone who is from who played at a FBS school and we were talking about our different football experiences. He stated that black fans at HBCU's are not passionate about sports like white fans. Which I feel that white fans and blacks fans just cheer differently. I told him to go on youtube and type in Fouling Out...A&T Style. The atmosphere can change it just needs to be more of the basketball experience.
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Post by aggiebred09 on Dec 16, 2011 13:49:37 GMT -5
I cant think of any FBS program or any FCS program that uses their student section to bring in more fans.
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Post by Aggie Monster on Dec 16, 2011 13:51:08 GMT -5
I here what your saying hollywood, but thats the wrong approach. Your friends observation was 100% correct if thats what you think we need to do. Black people just dont care about whats going on on the field. Those same black people will cheer loudly at a Panthers and or FBS game. We just need to instill a football only atmosphere. Thats the only way to consistently sell out. Build a FOOTBALL culture, not a "party" culture. We been doing that forever.
And aggiebred is correct. You dont market to students! Its pointless. what's the point of 10,000 non-paying fans? You already got their money. In-state alumni, and the city of Greensboro is who will put butts in seats.
And I'll be honest. I used to think like hollywood when I was younger, but now realize that when the stadium is actually packed it's waaaaaay more older alumni and families there than current students or recent grads.
At some FBS schools students are lucky to even have a section at all.
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Post by hollywoodswagga on Dec 16, 2011 14:30:21 GMT -5
I think people will care about the games but they have to get engaged first with chats, dances, song etc.....I think its the whole empty club parking lot scenario. When you want to go out for the night and you pull up to the club and there are no cars in the parking lot you leave. I think that is the major problem at A&T. Students are not showing up for home games and with more of the students showing up for games having a better game day experience they are more likely to show up after graduation. Hence your student section will bring more fans to games in the future this is how you increase the attendence yearly just my humble opinion.
Also the biggest marketing tool will be creating what type of fans we are. So students and fans will know what the atmosphere will be like walking in the stadium. I have been fortunate enough to have attended many professional and collegiate games. Not every professional, FBS football games have loud passionate football fans. Its the stadium and fans who believed they were going to be the craziest loudest fans that were. A few years back I attended the App State vs Furman game and this is my most memorable game from start to finish. I enjoyed this game more than any home Wake Forest, UNC, State, or ECU game it was comparable to a Virginia Tech game. And this was before App started winning the national championships.
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