FanPost

UCLA Football: Home Attendance Up 9% This Year- Wait Before You Congratulate Morgan Center

Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Here is an article from Jon Solomon at CBS Sports, which chronicles the drop in attendance at college football games this season. As you can see, one of the bright lights is UCLA. We had a 9% increase in attendance in 2014, versus 2013. Meanwhile, the FBS average dropped 4%. So Morgan Center clearly had superior marketing. That must be why attendance was up this season. Or...

The Pac-12, as most are aware, plays a nine game conference schedule. With a 12 game total season (and the lack of cupcake scheduling, where you bring in FCS schools for an extra home game to pad your margin of victory) this typically means six home games and six away games. And with an uneven number of conference games, this means one year you will have four home conference games (and five away), and the next year, you will have five home conference games (and four away).

As a general premise, we should draw more for conference games than for non-conference games, because the games help determine our future fate in terms of making it to the conference championship. This would obviously be offset by having super attractive non-conference powers visiting the Rose Bowl, but in the last two seasons, the non-conference visitors have been Nevada, New Mexico State and Memphis. Not exactly super attractive.

Another general premise is that we should draw more when school is in session and the students are in the area, than we should before classes start. So if the home game portion of the schedule is backloaded, attendance should increase.

Further complicating the comparison is the fact that the Pac 12 South rotates out two Pac 12 North schools each year. Since the conference expanded in 2011, UCLA has played Oregon State and Washington State in a two year cycle, and Oregon and Washington in the next two year cycle. A final factor to consider is that we switch between home and away every year with the California schools, the Arizona schools, and Utah/Colorado.

All of these interwoven factors worked to UCLA's advantage in 2014. Here is a breakdown of the attendance by opponent in 2014 and 2013.

2013-

Two non-conference opponents (Nevada and New Mexico State) 60,562 and 58,263 (before classes)

Berkeley 84,272 (classes in session for remaining games)

Colorado 80,377 (homecoming)

Washington (Friday night) 68,106

Arizona State 70,131

Average 70,285

2014-

Memphis 72,098 (before classes)

Utah 74,329 (classes in session for remaining games)

Oregon 80,139

Arizona 80,246 (homecoming)

$C 82,431

Stanford (Friday holiday afternoon) 70,658

Average 76,650 (9% increase)

Comparing attendance after students were back on campus, the average for the four games in 2013 was 75,722. The average for the five games in 2014 was 77,561. This is a 2% increase, which defies the national overall downturn. This is good news. But this demonstrates that the 9% increase for the entire season 2014 vs. 2013 is due in no small part to the fact that we only had one home game before students returned to campus in 2014, compared to two games in 2013 before students returned to campus.

We also had five conference home games in 2014, compared to four conference home games in 2013.

And, very importantly, we had Oregon as our Pac 12 North home opponent in 2014, compared to Washington in 2013. And most importantly, we had $C at the Rose Bowl. This was, not surprisingly, the highest home attendance game in 2014. I will go out on a limb and suggest that this will also be the highest home attendance game in 2016, 2018, and 2020, assuming that $C has not had to drop football with an SMU style death penalty.

The schedule definitely broke in our favor in 2014.

Please don't misunderstand the message here. Our football team received solid support from our fan base for home games in 2014. I think it is wonderful that more fans came to games in 2014.

But let's not attribute this to some wonderful marketing on the part of Moron Center. You can bet that Doughnut is going to waddle up to Block's office, so they can do the Blockero two-step and spout some nonsense about being on the cutting edge in terms of sports marketing. Funny how that doesn't come up in any discussions of attendance in OPUG.

The fans came out in force in 2014. That is wonderful. Will they come out in force again next year? I hope so, but we won't have Oregon and $C on the home schedule, so my guess is that attendance will decrease. This is not because we have less devoted fans but simply because the schedule will be stacked against us.

Two final thoughts. First, if fans are staying away from OPUG because there is so much else to do in Los Angeles, and there are so many competing demands on our time and money, why are more fans going to the Rose Bowl? I guess the competing demands come up in November but not in October. Or...

Second, IMO, the drop in attendance overall nationwide is a function of the schedule now being driven by TV. It is hard to market when every game time is TBA. In the old days, when I was in Westwood, you knew before the season began when each game was going to be played. We shared the Mausoleum with $C, so we had some Friday night games. And we played some Saturday night games (very cool card stunts with flashlights, by the way). But this was all known in advance, so that you could make plans. And every Saturday day game basically started at the same time in the afternoon.

Now, you don't know if the game will be at 12:30, 3, 5, 7 or 7:30. There is no continuity or rhythm as a fan.

The TV beast is feeding dollars into athletic departments across the country, including Moron Center. But the in-stadium fans are paying the price.

So again, great support for our football team. And Moron Center- don't strain too hard patting yourselves on the back for a job not necessarily well done.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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