Create a New Forum Owner Login Contribute & Create Your Member account VoyUser Login (see contribute) VoyForums Directory/Categories No-ads: Completely remove ads from your forum VoyForums Homepage VoyForums News Help Desk VoyForums Exchange FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions Search VoyForums

[ VoyUser Login optional ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

Subject: Declining everything Author: Dbag [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 00:36:21 11/05/09 Thu Honestly, every football game (aside from H/Y at times) signals declining attendance and participation. The AD people have tried marketing everything they can, it's their job after all. What should we do, just expect the same attendance or worse? Can we get a better attendance? As an old Ivy alum, I can't see it getting any better... [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: the dirty secret is [Edit] Date Posted: 00:46:30 11/05/09 Thu most of the self-proclaimed diehards (like those on these boards) don't show either. they have to go to their kids' games, have work to do... etc. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: M3 [Edit] Date Posted: 07:21:46 11/05/09 Thu In terms of crowd resurrection this will only happen if the Ivies went to the next level of competition. Harvard Holy Cross is one thing- Harvard BC would be quite another. Penn vs Navy, Princeton vs Duke, Yale vs UVa, Cornell vs Syracuse, Columbia v Rutgers, Dartmouth v UConn. These are matchups that would draw 30-40k attendance. How low would the AI have to drop to make these competitive games? Probably too low. But look at Wake Forest. Small school with good academics and dynamite athletic program. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Besides everything else Author: Go Green [Edit] Date Posted: 08:30:26 11/05/09 Thu Besides everything else, no D-I team is going to make an away game appearnace at Dartmouth or Columbia. Our respective stadiums (stadia) are too small to justify the trip economically. MAYBE Navy agrees to play at Franklin Field or MAYBE UVA goes to the Yale Bowl. Others... I don't see it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Besides everything else Author: Doggers [Edit] Date Posted: 08:39:43 11/05/09 Thu FBS/BCS level schools cannot justifiably schedule these games. Ivies have no scholarship and thus a win vs. the Ivies does not count for the magic bowl elibility number of 6 wins. They aren't going to travel to our stadiums anyway. The best we could hope for would be a "body bag" game at the big school's home site. Take our paycheck and our 60-7 loss and go home. That doesn't help anything [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Besides everything else Author: Still waiting on the Michigan-App State game [Edit] Date Posted: 12:03:11 11/05/09 Thu the one to be played at App State [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Besides everything else Author: Doggers [Edit] Date Posted: 12:53:26 11/05/09 Thu Even if we could be assured of a home and home series... Players like Armanti Edwards aren't showing up in the Ivies regularly. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: M3 [Edit] Date Posted: 09:11:53 11/05/09 Thu For the sake of discussion- If Penn had scholarships for fb could they build a program that could be competitive in the ACC? I say absolutely yes. I think HYP and could also pull it off. Will it ever happen? Absolutely no. Best hope is to remain 1AA and hope for 2-10k per game with bumps for HY or a meaningful P/PR P/C Pr/Y D/H game. Because of big financial support from Alums I doubt D3 is in the offing. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: D3 a nonstarter Author: Go Green [Edit] Date Posted: 09:29:52 11/05/09 Thu NCAA rules say that if you go Division III in football, you have to go Division III in everything. The Ivies will drop football (which will never happen in its own right) before we go Division III (which will piss off the basketball, hockey, lacrosse, baseball, etc. alums as well). [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: inevitable Author: ivy fan [Edit] Date Posted: 09:32:32 11/05/09 Thu Unless somewhere down the road there is a dramatic change in the Ivy administrations attitude toward football, there is no stopping the evolutionary steps towards a continued deemphasis of the sport. As time goes by every graduating class will consist of more individuals who never even took in a game at their school. Thus the alumni will consist more and more of those who are not interested in maintaining the game at the D1aa level. It doesn't take a visionary to see where the sport is headed - just a realist. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: Hold on there a minute [Edit] Date Posted: 10:59:59 11/05/09 Thu Could Penn or any other ivy build an ACC program with scholarships? In theory yes. How likely is it? Duke and UVA are two (possibly among others) academic schools comparable to Penn. Historically how have they done in the ACC, on average? And how about the ongoing disciplinary issues UVA has had to deal with? Remember, in theory all women are attractive and all men can make them laugh. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Dick Kazmaier and Terrelle Pryor Author: Princeton Fan [Edit] Date Posted: 11:44:56 11/05/09 Thu A couple of years ago, former Ivy commissioner, er, excuse me, executive director Jeff Orleans was asked in an interview why we couldn't aspire to be like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern or Vanderbilt in football. His response was -- and I'm not even trying to paraphrase him -- "How's that working out for them?" At the time of the interview, those four teams were something like 0-20 on the year. Let's face it. There was an era when a football team could consist mostly of genuine student-athletes and still be competitive at the Division I-A level. It's still theoretically possible in basketball because a roster only carries fourteen players and one or two superstars can carry a team. (Although I'm sure that Duke would NOT want you to see the SAT scores of its team.) In football, you need at least twenty "real" Division 1-A players on a team and one or two better than that in order to be competitive. The athleticism of the game has simply advanced too much. Posters on this board like to blame the eight Ivy administrations for the decline in our football programs but -- you know what? -- the world has changed. Dick Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy as a small shifty white guy with a decent but not spectacular arm. Even though the spread offense of today is 100% tailor-made for him, how many Division I-A teams do you think he could start for? Let me repeat. I'm saying that a genuine student-athlete who was the single best football player in America his senior year would have a hard time finding a starting job in today's world where a 6'5", 240-pound guy can run a 4.4 forty. And that particular guy, Terrelle Pryor, isn't even doing very well. We Ivy Leaguers may not be maximizing our football resources but the world has changed, gentlemen. There's nothing we can do to reverse that. We have only two options: (1) Do basically what we're doing now. Stay with genuine students and play in our own little sand box. (2) Drop all AI restrictions, adopt full scholarships, accept a permanent academic underclass on our campuses and go for broke. There's no point in pursuing the middle strategy, namely being Northwestern or Vanderbilt. Given those two options, I choose our own little sand box. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Dick Kazmaier and Terrelle Pryor Author: Bengal [Edit] Date Posted: 12:26:53 11/05/09 Thu The world has changed. The Presidents, however, could let football participate in the playoffs. They could even add back the football coaching slot they cut a few years back. That might improve the place kicking and special teams play. Cheers. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Dick Kazmaier and Terrelle Pryor Author: Doggers [Edit] Date Posted: 12:52:08 11/05/09 Thu You assume that the current non-athlete admits are all academically up to par. Legacy admits and affirmative action tendencies beg to differ. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: Bengal [Edit] Date Posted: 11:10:15 11/05/09 Thu A couple of observations. I assume each of the Ivy schools views intercollegiate competition as part of its educational mission. I also assume they may wish for SRO crowds at every sporting event, starting with football, and for as much revenue as possible to defray this part of their educational mission as they see it. But I doubt they care very much more about how many people show up at the Bowl or Franklin Field et al than they care about how many spectators show up at the PChem course lectures. As much as atmosphere and "crowd" are a part of sports, I just think there is a limit on how much they care about crowd size. They will encourage it in the limited ways they can, but they cannot overcome very much the explosion of options for the sports fan and the overall decline in the level of play and national relevance of Ivy football in the last 50 years and their own unfair ban on post-League season games. The Ivy presidents have decided that, since 1956 and certainly more recently, unlike every other varsity sport, success in football is defined solely by Ivy League game outcomes. A 7-0 Ivy record, with 3 blowout losses to non-League teams, would have an Ivy President in ecstasy. At one time, maybe, at a few schools, and in a different world - Yale with UCONN and Princeton with Rutgers, Datmouth and NH, perhaps others -- in-state contests had some meaning, but even then never to the extent that League games did and do. The Presidents probably have some clear sense of the tradition surrounding Ivy football. The upshot, in my opinion, is that there may be 3000 people watching Yale play at Princeton and the Bowl may be half-filled on the last day of the season (I am sure it will be more than that), but nothing is going to change. We aren't going to the playoffs, we aren't going to Division III, we are not going to drop football, we are going nowhere. Maybe one day there is an 11th game. Even that may get traded off for elimination of the pre-season scrimmage and frankly, I have my doubts whether such a trade off is worth it. At some point, maybe, they will let us go the play-offs. I won't hold my breath. But given our academic standards and the absence of athletic scholarships, quality of play will continue, over time, to stay where it is at best, and more likely decline at least a bit. And the Presidents will continue to be content with their football teams winning an Ivy title and not very concerned about the attendance or revenue figures. If finances require chopping varsity sports, football will be the last one chopped. They may cut again the number of coaches, like they did several years ago, I understand led, at least in part, by Brown asserting financial distress, but they will keep football by hook or by crook. Cheers. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: Sprint66 [Edit] Date Posted: 14:47:14 11/05/09 Thu I do think the Ivy League could do a lot more in terms of marketing and group sales. At Cornell, we're barely even mentioned in the largest area newspaper, the Post-Standard out of Syracuse. Actually, Cortland State and Ithaca College probably get more coverage than the Big Red. I think we could do a lot to improve our non-league scheduling. Cornell is playing Wagner the next two seasons and we'll be lucky to get the stadium ushers to show up for that game! We have a great rivalry with nearby Colgate, but the two schools do very little to promote this game. I think it has the potential to be like the Lehigh vs. Lafayette rivalry if we just focused on selling this great rivalry more. I also think we could schedule some really good quality opponents like Delaware and UMass. Delaware draws over 20,000 fans for every home game. I wish we could get the Army game going again, but so far that's been a no go. I don't know why because Cornell plays Army in virtually every other sport. It's such a natural rivalry geographically and with Cornell's large ROTC program. I do know one thing, our athletic department is struggling financially right now and we could use every ticket dollar and concession we can collect. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Re: Sprint66's post Author: CNY Cornell [Edit] Date Posted: 20:58:37 11/05/09 Thu Sprint66 wrote: "At Cornell, we're barely even mentioned in the largest area newspaper, the Post-Standard out of Syracuse. Actually, Cortland State and Ithaca College probably get more coverage than the Big Red." In the case of the Post-Standard, I've often suspected something fishy was going on regarding their coverage of Cornell. It often seems like they go to great lengths NOT to mention CU. When they do, it strikes me as only being done begrudgingly. I have no idea why. Ostensibly the Post-Standard is THE newspaper of record in Central New York and Ithaca is technically part of CNY so... I have some conspiracy theories about why people in Syracuse would rather read about tiny D3 schools in the CNY area than they would about the Ivy down the road, but I'll keep them to myself. However, anyone that has spent any time in Syracuse lately can probably guess where I'm going with this. Suffice it to say, the town has changed quite a bit in recent years and a lot of folks there don't like "our kind." [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Problems and Solutions Author: Steve Mathiason [Edit] Date Posted: 15:10:17 11/05/09 Thu This debate is older than this board, but I'll try to summarize some things, then propose some concrete solutions that should help: First, change is glacial in the Ivies as it pertains to football. Still, I remember the days of 9-game schedules and NO, I mean NO Spring Practice. So take heart, change can come in some of these areas. PROBLEMS: The biggest problem with Ivy Football has nothing to do with the product on the field. The problem is that Ivy Football is inching towards being a product without a market. Aside from those alums that care about their teams, who else does? There are some, true, but enough to fill the seats? Ultimately, attendance has to increase. With anything, you're either getting bigger or smaller, better or worse. Who can argue that the attendance is actually getting better? And, if attendance continues to dwindle, will Ivy football be justifiable long-term as an expenditure? If things continue to trend as they are, schools may be forced to make hard decisions. DIII is out of the question. The Ivy League is a bona-fide D-I league. REALISTIC SOLUTIONS: These are nothing new to many on this board..... 1) Forget FBS or FCS. Teams are classified by schollie limits and which type of postseason play they aspire to. Both are non-issues to Ivy Football. The Ivy League needs to simply be branded as "Division I". Period. Nothing else. That should be the start of the PR campaign. 2) Reap the benefits of the more generous aid packages that Ivies are starting to offer. I have NO doubt that if done well, the quality of players that dot Ivy rosters will increase markedly- on par with the best FCS and even some lower-level FBS schools. 3) Lobby, lobby, lobby hard the NCAA to drop the ridiculous ruling that prohibits OOC games vs Ivy teams from counting towards bowl eligibility. This would immediately open up OOC games that can bring in fans and revenue. 4) Swap out the scrimmage for an 11th game. 5) Be more creative with gametimes. Night games are hugely popular across the country. Mix in some. In no way did I propose anything that includes athletic merit-based scholarships or postseason play. Those seem to be the two sacred cows to the Prexies. If these steps are taken, this will happen: 1) All Ivy teams will have stronger, faster, and better teams. 2) With these better teams, Ivy schools can schedule with that 11th game a more attractive OOC opponent from either the FCS or FBS, and have the other 3 OOC games to play the Wagners and Marists of the world. Then, you will finally see the Columbia-Army game that had once been a mainstay. Cornell could take on Syracuse every now and then. A stronger Princeton team just might go up against Rutgers every 5 years or so, same with Harvard and BC. Temple would schedule Penn as quickly as they do Villanova. Just my thought, FWIW...... [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Re: Problems and Solutions Author: Doggers [Edit] Date Posted: 15:48:23 11/05/09 Thu You got some things right: 1- More Night Games- kids want to tailgate, but if the game starts at noon, that isn't enough time to roll out of bed and do all the busy things Ivy kids do on a saturday (workout, run to the library, have brunch, etc) 2- Market as Division 1, heck, market at all!! TV, Radio, Print, a full media blitz in local markets. Invite all the high school and pop warner teams for free every week. heck, do away with tickets sales altogether. make it up with concessions and parking 3- swap out scrimmage for 11th game. I don't think the number of games really matters. BUT Ivies need to START when the rest of the country starts playing. or we lose all opening weekend buzz I would add: Forget playing big time schools first. To boost attendance locally, all Ivies should play their neighbor colleges. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: old blue [Edit] Date Posted: 17:30:59 11/05/09 Thu i am with doggers about promoting attendance by playing neighboring schools.i thought with the new tuition schedule plus aid we are basically giving scholarships.results may take longer in football than basketball given the number of players necessary to make a team competitive.is there anyway for ad/presidents to petition the ncaa to remove the ban of not counting games for bowl appearances with schools who do not give scholarships.seems inconsistent with all other sports. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: Navy Fan [Edit] Date Posted: 20:19:24 11/05/09 Thu To follow up on what Doggers said - playing Ohio State in the Horseshoe was supposed to be a "body bag" game for Navy...take the paycheck ($1.5 million) and go home. In fact, it turned out quite well and was one of the few times where Navy highlights where shown on ESPN. Navy vs Penn is not far fetched at Franklin Field where the Army/Navy game was played for years. People would show up just for the memories and Navy puts on a good show, with the band and the flyover. Plus, Navy gets a fair number of recruits from Pennsylvania so the coaches could take in some local high school games the night before...as they did when they went to Texas (twice). All I'm saying is that if Rice and SMU can play Navy, why not Penn. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> Subject: Re: Declining everything Author: Ricks [Edit] Date Posted: 20:39:20 11/05/09 Thu As to playing local schools, Yale used to scrimmage neighboring schools; New Haven, SCSU; CCSU; etc...nobody showed up...perhaps a regular season game might bring in a few locals, but nothing like a capacity crowd. The Ivy League is not alone in declining attendance. Only diehards watch Ivy teams on Saturday. Even Army couldn't draw in the Bowl in fairly recent appearances. Traditional rivals like Dartmouth & Princeton don't draw squat any more compared to the 40K's and 50 K's of years gone by. You could hand out freebies on the streets of New Haven and wouldn't fill the Bowl. Too much to see on tv; too much "gotta watch muffy and buffy play soccer; $15.00 a ticket is too much; etc. Best we can hope for (later in the season) would be to catch a stray big fish; get maybe 30-35,000 to see a big time club come in; but filling any Ivy Stadium every Saturday is of days gone by...forever. Every thing every sincere poster here has said has merit, but won't draw anything but yawns by the top guys at each school. Let's draw a deep breath and live with what we've got, such as it is. Personally, I'm unhappy but satisfied!! [ Post a Reply to This Message ]