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Post by IdahoBoy on Oct 27, 2006 1:35:58 GMT -5
Who has the potential, and what would it take for them to take over the attendance lead from Hawaii? Hawaii has been average over 6000 fans per match since they opened the Stan Sheriff Center. Nebraska, obviously is in second place, but are limited to sell-outs of 4000 and change. Some schools play in as big or bigger arenas than Hawaii. What would it take these other schools to take over the attendance lead. Will it happen? Who are the top candidates? I think immediately you can look at the top 4-5 schools as threats, but, in all honesty, I think it will be an up and comer school that does it, if it can be done. I think Hawaii has a 3000 seat lead on Nebraska at this point. Of the top attended matches, Hawaii has 13 of the top 14. Creighton hosted the largest attended match of the year. www.avca.org/collegiate/06DIGrandFanClub.asp
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Post by roy on Oct 27, 2006 2:49:56 GMT -5
Oddly enough, Nebraska isn't #2 in attendance this year. Since Wisconsin hosted the AVCA Showcase (or whatever they are calling it now), they had huge numbers in their first 2 matches and they are #2 in attendance over Nebraska. They are averaging about 200 more fans per match than the Huskers.
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Post by bucky415 on Oct 27, 2006 2:55:55 GMT -5
I don't think it would happen unless they gave away free beer to students or something (which would probably just end up driving away most of the rest of the crowd), but I would guess Wisconsin would be the best contender to unseat Hawaii for the simple reason that they have a venue that is big enough to match Hawaii's crowds. I think the Field House seats around 10,500, while Nebraska is limited by the capacity of the Coliseum and Minnesota by that of the Pav. Wisconsin's attendance actually wasn't helped by the AVCA, which drew less than the Big Ten matches they have hosted, maybe due to the higher ticket prices. The biggest crowd was against Indiana, where teams getting in free helped get the crowd into the upper deck of the Field House and over 7,000. I am hoping there is a huge crowd for Penn State tonight; they usually attract a good gathering of fans. The only problem is that Halloween might scare some people away from coming downtown. I think Hawaii will continue to dominate, though. Volleyball is just a bigger deal there than it is anywhere else.
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Post by Ye Olde Dawg on Oct 27, 2006 3:44:42 GMT -5
That AVCA list is out of date -- it's as of October 8th. They missed the Washington State at Washington match on the 13th with 6,216 fans in attendance. Edmundson Pavilion will seat 10,000, so UW has the facility; all we need is the fans.
I'm not sure what would bring in the fans. If anything, attendance this year is slightly down from last year. It seems that more people came to see the team make history than are coming now that they're defending champions.
Seriously, if Nebraska had a big enough arena that it didn't automatically sell out I think they'd give Hawaii a run for their money, but that's not going to happen any time soon. For the other teams -- well, they're limited by the fact that as Bucky put it volleyball just isn't as big a deal as it is in Hawaii. In some ways it's harder to change that than it is to build a new building.
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Post by Chance on Oct 27, 2006 6:18:11 GMT -5
That AVCA list is out of date -- it's as of October 8th. They missed the Washington at Washington match on the 13th with 6,216 fans in attendance. Edmundson Pavilion will seat 10,000, so UW has the facility; all we need is the fans. Do you mean Washington state at washington? Wasn't that significantly above the average because of the hoops thing right afterwords? I don't know what the technical ruling is, but anytime you get a significant above average crowd at one of those joint event things it doesnt really count in my book.
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Post by ugopher on Oct 27, 2006 8:18:16 GMT -5
If MN were to start drawing close to capacity crowds at the Pav they could move to Williams Arena. What would it take to start drawing capacity crowds? For the Vikings to move out of state, the Gopher football program to take its rightful place in the pecking order given its performance over the years, and for the sports editors at the local papers to wake up.
Oh, and Venus to align with Mars and the non-planet Pluto.
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Post by Ye Olde Dawg on Oct 27, 2006 16:00:10 GMT -5
Do you mean Washington state at washington? Wasn't that significantly above the average because of the hoops thing right afterwords? I don't know what the technical ruling is, but anytime you get a significant above average crowd at one of those joint event things it doesnt really count in my book. Yes, it was a "Hoopla" promotion, and that's probably what accounts for setting the attendance record for UW at home. It was also "Pack the Arena Night" and an in-state rivalry -- and a Friday night. I think a similar event last year (but without the basketball tie-in) had over 5000 fans. Promotions and tie-ins happen all the time. I don't think there is or can be an official "technical ruling," but I'd say to count it. It doesn't really matter; it will still be a long time before UW's attendance catches up with Hawaii's.
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Post by Pirate VB Fan on Oct 27, 2006 16:51:57 GMT -5
Do you mean Washington state at washington? Wasn't that significantly above the average because of the hoops thing right afterwords? I don't know what the technical ruling is, but anytime you get a significant above average crowd at one of those joint event things it doesnt really count in my book. Yes, it was a "Hoopla" promotion, and that's probably what accounts for setting the attendance record for UW at home. It was also "Pack the Arena Night" and an in-state rivalry -- and a Friday night. I think a similar event last year (but without the basketball tie-in) had over 5000 fans. Promotions and tie-ins happen all the time. I don't think there is or can be an official "technical ruling," but I'd say to count it. It doesn't really matter; it will still be a long time before UW's attendance catches up with Hawaii's. This was paid attendence for the volleyball match. They stopped counting at the end of game 2 and did not count the basketball crowd. If they had counted everyone that came in that night it would have probably been about 12,000. A neat trick for a 10,000 seat stadium, but a lot of people left after the volleyball was over. Washington has "ruined" their average attendence this year by hosting the early season tournament with teams that no one cares about. There were less than 1000 of us for University of Maryland - Baltimore County and the like. Of course, the PAC-10 didn't help by having Stanford come to town before school started. That kept the attendence down in the 4000 range. It would have been 6000 or so during the school year. At least it was a Friday night. The Thursday night games have less than 1500 attend.
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Post by Ye Olde Dawg on Oct 27, 2006 17:35:33 GMT -5
Washington has "ruined" their average attendence this year by hosting the early season tournament with teams that no one cares about. There were less than 1000 of us for University of Maryland - Baltimore County and the like. Of course, the PAC-10 didn't help by having Stanford come to town before school started. That kept the attendence down in the 4000 range. It would have been 6000 or so during the school year. At least it was a Friday night. The Thursday night games have less than 1500 attend. The data's not all in on that. Every fact you cited is true, but I don't know if that's all that's behind the lower average. For instance, last year we hosted Oregon on a Friday in mid-November and 2500 people came. This year we hosted a better Oregon team on a Friday in October and barely 2000 came. There may be some reason for this that I can't see -- and it is just a comparison of two matches -- but for right now I just wonder if the crowds are slightly down this year. Whatever. The attendance is still pretty good, whether you compare to other Pac-10 schools or look across the country. And let's hope there's a good crowd for tonight's match with UCLA!
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Post by lilred on Oct 27, 2006 18:32:50 GMT -5
For Nebraska obviously, they need to move to a bigger venue, which I really would rather not see. However, I think one indication of how many people you might get would be to look at the attendance figures for low-marquee matches as at least half to 60% of the any team's schedule is made up "lower" quality teams. For example I checked out just the attendance figures for the Devaney over the last 3 years. The average is roughly around 6700-7100. The matches were two against Iowa St. and Pacific. So using that as a guide Nebraska might be able to reach the 7500-8000 mark.
The best crowds I've seen this year as far as enthusiasm and relatively well attended (that were on TV) were at Purdue and Minnesota.
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Post by FreeBall on Oct 27, 2006 18:49:08 GMT -5
For example I checked out just the attendance figures for the Devaney over the last 3 years. The average is roughly around 6700-7100. The matches were two against Iowa St. and Pacific. So using that as a guide Nebraska might be able to reach the 7500-8000 mark. But this assumes that all of the matches would be played at Devaney. I doubt that many of the current season ticket holders would be in favor of such a move. I only see two ways to increase seating capacity that I could support. One would be to reconfigure the Coliseum, which seems to be a non-starter of an idea. The other would be to build a new venue with a capacity of 7,000 to 8,000 and a setup similar to the Coliseum. Funding would be the big hurdle for this - especially with the slow pace of contributions to the big football project.
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Post by Wolfgang on Oct 27, 2006 19:10:11 GMT -5
5 more points.
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Post by pineapple on Oct 27, 2006 19:19:29 GMT -5
I think this was mentioned in past strings regarding Hawaii's attendance. Hawaii's attendance would be much larger had it not been for live TV coverage and rebroadcast at 10:30 p.m. on the same night. I am a typical Wahine fan who used to attend every match when I was working in Downtown Honolulu. Now that I no longer work there, I just watch the matches live in the comfort of my home.
Honolulu is not a small city, it's the 13th largest in the country, its urban area is about 30 mile long and only 2 or 3 miles wide. it’s ideal for monorail, but it has none. The main thoroughfare is H1 Freeway. About a million people who live on this small island of Oahu, which is officially the City- the City and County of Honolulu, use that route to Dowwntown on a daily basis. We don't have many adequate alternative routes to and from Stan Sheriff Center from the various towns on the island, just that freeway. Morning and evening rush hour traffic is so bad that it may take 1 1/2 to 2 hours to travel, say, a mere 18 miles if you live on the west and central parts of the island where the population is larger than the core city itself. On good days it will still take 1 hour. Again, this is because we have only one freeway- H1 Freeway, not counting H2 and H3, which are only connectors. The other major route is Kamehameha Hwy, but it is the local route full of intersections and traffic lights.
It is about 22 miles from my house to SSC, located on the other side of Downtown Honolulu. Without traffic I can get there in 15 minutes. But this happens only in the wee hours of the morning, like 2 to 5 a.m. Other times, believe me, the freeway is always full of cars. About 15 years ago, I read in the Sunday national supplement to the paper (Parade?) that Honolulu was one of the four most congested cities in the nation. I attribute this to the shortage of roads here. For all you dissenters, Kauai, which is the fourth largest island is said to be more congested than Honolulu, because it has only one main road and a handfull of traffic lights.
Despite the traffic, there would be literally thousands upon thousands of additional Wahine fans who would attend the matches if the live TV coverage stopped . SSC has a 10,000+ seating capacity. On the average there are 3,000 to 4,000 empty seats. I believe without live TV coverage the Wahine would draw 10,000+ fans on a regular basis. The popularity of Wahine volleyball here is that great!
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Post by cmmhc4 on Oct 27, 2006 19:35:03 GMT -5
Here's the top 10, as of October 23 put together by a Wisconsin sports information director
School - Avg.
1. Hawai'i 7.017 2. Wisconsin 4,341 3. Nebraska 4,133 4. Minnesota 3,954 5. Missouri 2,917 6. Florida 2,630 7. Penn State 2,615 8. BYU 2,147 9. Wichita State 2,146 10. Texas A&M 2,105
I don't think anyone is going to surpass the Hawaii average for a long time.
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Post by Thrill of the 'ville on Oct 27, 2006 20:02:12 GMT -5
The only ways Hawaii would fall in attendance is if they had to move to a smaller facility or if something happened to the team and they weren't allowed to play.
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