Around the Big Ten

[THE_WIZARD_]

shaddup

[Tom W]

Hoke pretty much lost the team, and any tolerance from the fans after that. When Maryland showed up and pushed these guys around, there an undeniable sense of closure and acceptance across the stadium. The big donors had certainly made it clear to Hackett that they were done, and the real statisticians probably saw the inevitable bailing out of season ticket holders. Plus they probably had a decent amount of confidence that Harbaugh might very well be available. The choice was simple.

[Cody_Russell]

[lineygoblue]

Hoke pretty much lost the team, and any tolerance from the fans after that. When Maryland showed up and pushed these guys around, there an undeniable sense of closure and acceptance across the stadium. The big donors had certainly made it clear to Hackett that they were done, and the real statisticians probably saw the inevitable bailing out of season ticket holders. Plus they probably had a decent amount of confidence that Harbaugh might very well be available. The choice was simple.

Problem now is, the big ticket holders are beginning to give the same signals that they did toward the end of the Hoke era. The luxury seats have a lot of empty spaces as one scans the stadium. When ohio comes to town in November its liable to be embarrassingly red.

[froot loops]

You guys might have been better with John Harbaugh

[hack]

I think that very idea was discussed. More predictable.

[lineygoblue]

We came close to getting him on the staff about a year ago. Baltimore was foolishly thinking of firing him. I have no doubt he would have come to AA to join Jim's staff.

[Tom W]

You guys might have been better with John Harbaugh

tIMG_2837.jpg

You are probably right about that. John is definitely the more rational of the brothers..

[iam416]

Gattis is a first year offensive coordinator and play caller.... He may be a genius offensive mind but he has zero track record.

Yeah, another option as to what's happening is that Gattis isn't up to the task, at least right now. HARBAUGH!!!! surely can identify coaches who can do the job without interference and coaches who can't. He may be getting involved a bit because he doesn't think Gattis is there, yet.

This would especially ring true if Saban/Locksey was running shit at UAT and Gattis was more or less a WR coach.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Problem now is, the big ticket holders are beginning to give the same signals that they did toward the end of the Hoke era. The luxury seats have a lot of empty spaces as one scans the stadium. When ohio comes to town in November its liable to be embarrassingly red.

The luxury boxes may be empty but they are still sold. I don't think ticket sales/seat licenses are an issue ..... yet. Where there might be cracks, and I don't speak from any insider basis, are donors. That outreach season for donors starts in January and moves on through the winter months into spring. By that time whoever is going to give has given. A weak finish to the 2019 season and another lack luster bowl performance will hit the donor base. That kind of finish may also affect season ticket sales for 2020. Corporate sales of the luxury boxes are a different animal not always sensitive to how the team is doing.

The problem Michigan's AD has with ticket resales in it's attempt to sell-out is there is no accountability. First of all, single game, direct tickets sales, are today, almost non-existent. Schools have partnered with consolidators like StubHub to sell single and group tickets on the open market. There can be some accountability for season and student ticket holders but Michigan has not embarked on a program to do that. Other schools have in attempts to stop the resale of those kinds of tickets, for example requiring the student ticket holder to match his student ID with the bar code on the ticket. Others have adopted programs that incentivise students for attending by proving discounts for the following season, for example, for using all their student tickets themselves in the current season.

Those approaches are uniformly unpopular with students which is why that sort of thing hasn't been expanded to season ticket holders and/or adopted more widely by schools. It's a free market and should probably remain so. In those circumstances, I don't think the football team's performance affects the sales of tickets for marquee games like MSU, ND and osu. It's what you can get if you are a student or a season ticket holder for one of those tickets if you choose to sell it to defray the cost of your original ticket package. Such is life in a capitalist's world.

Another thing I found interesting was that CFB programs ARE concerned with dwindling attendance and the differences between sold tickets and scanned tickets on game day. When the melodious voice of Carl Grapentine announces the game day's attendance numbers in the Big House, we all know those numbers are bull-shit. I have read that scanned tickets sometimes run at the rate of 50% of sold tickets at some of the smaller FBS programs. Top P5 programs run anywhere from 5% to 20%.

By-in-large though, programs seem less concerned about a holder of a season or student ticket reselling a ticket than they do about marketing strategies to keep a CFB game a desirable entertainment event that people will pay to go see live. In doing that there is a balancing act between signing lucrative TV contracts, which tends to draw customers from a live event to the televised version, and enhancing the game experience and making it wroth the cost - typically pretty high these days. The focus within an AD becomes that of marketing strategies to reach customers rather than how well the football team is doing. This article talks about that:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/08/as...old-an-answer/

[lineygoblue]

I still think the large empty spaces at home games, and the amount of red when ohio shows up is embarrassing. When I was on the event staff, the last time those yahoos showed up, literally hundreds of them let us know very loudly that they had taken over our stadium. I mean, it was literally 'in our face' letting us know they owned our building.

Its hard for me to believe that the powers that be don't seem to care, but from this hillbilly's POV, they don't seem to. Once they've "got their money", they don't care who the ticket holder roots for, or how they got their ticket.

The students are very inventive on how to get past the ticket verification process. Most of them just wait until about 30 minutes before kickoff, and then rush the entry portals in groups of about 100-200 or so. I challenge anyone to try and see EVERY ticket of EVERY person that passes you, when its about 100 people in 30 seconds. That's what stadium management wants the event staff to do, and its physically impossible. We caught a few cheaters, but the vast majority got away.

[Jeff Buchanan]

..........Its hard for me to believe that the powers that be don't seem to care, but from this hillbilly's POV, they don't seem to. Once they've "got their money", they don't care who the ticket holder roots for, or how they got their ticket......

I don't think they do. Dave Brandon was the first of M's ADs to be flat-out obvious that his goal was to make Michigan's football games as entertaining and as popular as going to a Taylor Swift concert.

Us traditionalists hate what has become of the game day experience with all it's blared wrak music, hihg ticket costs and assortment of towel cannons and such devices at half time. But, at the same time, complaining about that trend is like pissing in the wind. It's happening because the current batch of ADs across the country are steeped in marketing management ..... sell some shit. I don't care if it's any good or not just make sure people think it is and keep them coming. The question is how to I fool the people into thinking this is the greatest show on earth as PT Barnum might say.

Don Canham didn't like the one product he had to sell and that was the product on the field. IOW, during his time, better basketball and football teams brought in the fans. Ward Manuel has a different perspective. I think it's one that crowds out how well Jim Harbaugh is doing with the football team. It's important, just not as important for keeping a fan base interested and continuing to buy tickets ....... balance the benefit of TV contracts with the risks, make attendance fun, stimulating, make it entertaining. I don't think those kinds of thoughts ever crossed Canham's mind. He was all about winning football games. IOW, during the current time, better football and basket ball teams don't matter so much.

[Tom W]

Oh, but those better teams still matter a lot more than they are given credit for. There is a limit to the amount of suckage that the rational fan is going to put up with and at which price. This limit is certainly lower than what those marketing geniuses in various Athletic Departments assume. They seem to have no concept (or don't care) that nobody likes to watch losers no matter how much "entertainment" is mixed in with the "experience", and we aren't all idiots with too much money and nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.

[lineygoblue]

Oh, but those better teams still matter a lot more than they are given credit for. There is a limit to the amount of suckage that the rational fan is going to put up with and at which price. This limit is certainly lower than what those marketing geniuses in various Athletic Departments assume. They seem to have no concept (or don't care) that nobody likes to watch losers no matter how much "entertainment" is mixed in with the "experience", and we aren't all idiots with too much money and nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.

lol .. maybe that's my problem, Tom. I am an idiot, and I have no money to spend. ...

I agree with your point, its really not a pleasant thought to get up at 6:00 am, drive an hour and a half each way, spend $200 for tickets, a minimum of $25 for parking, and $8.00 for a cup of Coca-cola flavored ice cubes to watch the team get embarrassed by Yahoo A&M from BFE. The "Flying M" playing the fight song only goes so far. At some point, the fans want these 4-5 star athletes to start playing like they should be. Those folks in Columbus wouldn't be satisfied with watching Jimmy-Bob from Wapakoneta "dot the i" if their football team sucked. They'd get vocal about it real fast, and their administration would listen and do something about it. Not so at Michigan. We have 'the legend' coaching now. He's got to be 'given a fair chance'.

Well, its year five. This is his chance. Don't screw it up. If he does screw it up, he needs to be more than 'on the hot seat'. There needs to be a freaking flame-thrower under his ass.

[hack]

IMO if they were thinking about the bottom line and not the W-L record they wouldn't be spending as much as they do on coaches.