Low Attendance

gt9589 said:
I hear you. The ‘non Greek’ students are always there early. The frat and sororities are always fashionably late. I think that’s always happened. Even in my day (early-mid 90s). Lol. Me and the guys from my dorm were always there at least 1/2 hour early. Even during the 1-10 season.
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Hate to look way back, but it wasn't always that way. In the 60s, all the students got there either early or at least on time. Not sure when that started changing.
 
GTRules said:
When I was an undergrad the frats always arrived early. It was always first come, first serve, and we all wanted a good seat.
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Reserved season block seating starting in 2008/2009 really seemed to kick start the fashionably late to the game trend. Go back to having the kids have to camp out to get tickets in a block and first come first serve for any seats not filled 5 minutes prior to kickoff.
 
MeatWrench said:
The hardy few who made the trek yesterday showed up for the ööööing funeral. Able to get excited in spurts but low key knew what was coming all along and never sustained any real home field advantage. You could see it in everyone’s face and feel it in the crowd. We all showed up to lose. We missed that XP and everyone was like ‘there it is’. That’s what I was waiting for. I knew it. That’s what we get for trotting out an irrelevant program in front of a disinterested school for years and years on end. Haven’t won two in a row but one time in 5 years. The die hards are dying hard and the cavalry is not coming.

Guess what? This is who we really are. Who are we kidding? We have regressed to the mean. The few great years under CPJ and CGOL were freakish outliers of the last 50 years and the 90 natty was the ultimate flash in the pan that will never be seen again. Hell, many of those ‘great’ years would only be good years v great for any real power. Wow! You actually beat your in-state rival!? Is this real life? Great success! 10-32 in my lifetime. Ten and thirty two. Ten. But muh 1950s and Bobby Dodd and the SEC and then just go kill yourself. Irrelevant.

And anyone trying to put a positive spin on a paltry crowd on a beautiful day in late October in a city of 6 million can deep throat a cactus. Wake up. We suck now and we will always suck saving a few years here and there where we shock the world and allow ourselves to hope. For whatever reason, we all fancy ourselves as some dormant power that’s just not getting the breaks because of x, y, z flavors of ‘the man’ but we are flat out not. We are just like every forever middling team that will never do what it takes to get on the national stage. Hell maybe we even CANT, right? Everyone wants to win so like…Why doesn’t everyone just win? Can’t. Spend money, hire Deion, pet the unicorn. Some schools just can’t. We don’t have it because we just don’t have it. Chicken and egg. In the infamous words of a high school band teacher I once knew when he was confronted with mediocracy, ‘Well, someone has to sweep the streets’. That’s us. We forever sweep the streets of college football. We are Will Hunting.

It’s sad and telling that we are re-teaching the crowd the East-West Yellow Jacket chant. I do appreciate the effort because I remember that it was a cool thing we did before the clown regime seemingly did away with it but then in typical ‘screw it up’ fashion we just do it once and then step on it with the ööööing PA. And just keep the PA going real loud on 3rd and 4th downs way into the play clock to keep the crowd totally out of it because that’s the best we can do for stadium atmosphere. The obvious preference of the powers that be is clearly that BDS is some kind of ööööing PA-driven dance club. Plz play some more Bon Jovi songs!!1!!1. Maybe more songs about whores and drugs that have to be heavily edited to even be played for the general public.

Glad as I am that the band finally stopped playing Jeezy 14 years later, the barrage of commercials driving the need to fill every second with some bullshit pop/rap bullshit or other fake ass guess who/DEI/stupid game filler is nauseating and has made the band 2nd class citizens. Sidelining one of the beautiful things about the college game. Cool. Yeah yeah. Not really Tech’s fault, blame the faceless TV gods, gotta fill the time and pacify the herd, but it flat SUCKS to go to a game anymore. Show up for a football game only to get held hostage listening to fake ass music drinking $10 beers while those that stay at home just get blasted with moar ads for the dick pills. Keep the clock running more to shorten the game because we’re all too broke to pay attention and then allow 5 plays in a row, TV timeout. Kickoff, TV timeout after touchdown TV timeout. Penalty, TV timeout. Runs out of bounds. TV timeout. Boo Paul Hewitt one last time yesterday, TV timeout.

It’s no wonder attendance is piss poor. It’s a öööö experience coupled with a öööö product.

And yes. I will tailgate all day and be at the UNC game because I am a rihtard who still doesn’t know any better
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WELL SAID SIR!!
 
GT flunkout said:
This was one of the better attended games we have had in the last 2 seasons, ESPECIALLY for a nooner. I was pleasantly surprised from my vantage point in the upper north. I commented several times that this was great for a 12:00 game and was something we could build off of if we could pull off the win. Anyone bitching about today's attendance might not have been around for the last few years very much. Bitch about the game, yes. That said I look forward to being embarrassed next Saturday.
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35,656 was at BC game. I remember the days when the media and folks would blast Paul Johnson for only getting 48K to a home game....SMH
 
GTFLETCH said:
35,656 was at BC game. I remember the days when the media and folks would blast Paul Johnson for only getting 48K to a home game....SMH
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Yup. We're at the lowest point since I started following in 2000. Sad state of affairs right now. The longer our program stays in this state, the harder it will be to pull out of the nosedive. What really stinks is that our team doesn't have anything exciting to watch right now. During the Gailey/Tenuta days, you could watch a great defense making plays. During the CPJ years, you could watch a team breaking some big runs. I was hopeful that Haynes King would be the exciting thing to watch, but he has regressed. Sad.
 
cajunjacket said:
Yup. We're at the lowest point since I started following in 2000. Sad state of affairs right now. The longer our program stays in this state, the harder it will be to pull out of the nosedive. What really stinks is that our team doesn't have anything exciting to watch right now. During the Gailey/Tenuta days, you could watch a great defense making plays. During the CPJ years, you could watch a team breaking some big runs. I was hopeful that Haynes King would be the exciting thing to watch, but he has regressed. Sad.
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Pass first teams seem to do that. A quick three and out gets the D back on the field. Or a sack ruins a drive.
 
It's not fun to go to home games and always lose. The only home game I missed last year was the Duke game... so I literally cannot remember the last P5 win I saw at BDS.

This whole attendance argument is a chicken or egg thing. Winning is a fun time. People want to experience fun times. Fun times are best experienced in person. Thus winning will lead to increased attendance. It's tacky to shame fans for not attending games to watch a team that is averaging less than one P5 home win per year dating back to the end of the Paul Johnson era.
 
Ouch….our home wins (actually at BDS) since 2018 against nonFCS….am I missing any (hopefully!)?

* 9/29/18 beat Bowling Green 63-17
* 11/10/18 beat Miami 27-21
* 11/17/18 beat UVA 30-27
==================================
* 9/7/19 beat USF 14-10
* 11/21/19 beat NCSU 28-26

* 10/9/20 beat UL 46-27
* 10/28/20 beat Duke 56-33

* no home wins in 2021 vs nonFCS (beat KSU)

* 10/8/22 beat Duke 23-20

* no home wins yet in 2023

Tough to get fans in the stands when we don’t have any G5 wins at home since this time last year- and 2 yrs prior to that.
 
The attendance issue has GT fighting a multi-front war. I believe others with data have highlighted the sheer numbers of Ga and metro located alumni and that alone is a challenge. Then the likelihood of all of these folks caring about football reduces this number. I have been a GT sidewall fan since 2005 and in particular the CPJ years. Have traveled to many away games and been dedicated to BDS and dome games. However last year I only attended two games. I hardly watch college games at all. There are multiple reasons but I must admit I fall in the old school student athlete fantasy. Real or otherwise. I hate NIL and portal so I guess I am officially an old get off my lawn. Now I just see mercenaries with no GT connection. How many are like me I don’t know but I do know that at least 7-8 of my GT caravan friends have also checked out. If this is a trend line with an aging fan base not being replaced attendance will of course suffer. At the end of the day you simply must love football to make the time and money investment and I suspect that each graduating class has fewer and fewer that simply love the game. No easy answers.
 
Yooperbuzz said:
Let's be honest. ALL sports that you are not playing in is entertainment. Always has been. There was very low attendance today even from the students.
Why?
Would you pay $$ to see a movie you know would be bad? Complete with snacks and drinks? (You know how expensive that is.) NO.
We are fielding a bad product on Saturdays. People will not pay to go see something bad.
How bad is it? When you see students, including some lettermen (male and female) leaving the game early from the student section, you know it is bad. When you see how empty the stands are, you know it is bad. (Was there even anybody in Upper North?)
Until we can field a good (doesn't have to be great) product with good coaching (even I know you don't call a timeout to punt) we will continue to lose $$ and have bad attendance. Listen to the non-attendance of students. They are not dumb. They will not watch a bad product.
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Over the years, particularly when clown was here, more and more people reached the breaking point. Once they find other stuff to do, it's hard to bring them back. In addition to the frustration of our team, blame it on the ACC. They should have never let basketball lead them by the nose and go get Pitt, Syracuse, BC. No one has any interest in seeing them as opponents.
 
Dcgt4542 said:
The attendance issue has GT fighting a multi-front war. I believe others with data have highlighted the sheer numbers of Ga and metro located alumni and that alone is a challenge. Then the likelihood of all of these folks caring about football reduces this number. I have been a GT sidewall fan since 2005 and in particular the CPJ years. Have traveled to many away games and been dedicated to BDS and dome games. However last year I only attended two games. I hardly watch college games at all. There are multiple reasons but I must admit I fall in the old school student athlete fantasy. Real or otherwise. I hate NIL and portal so I guess I am officially an old get off my lawn. Now I just see mercenaries with no GT connection. How many are like me I don’t know but I do know that at least 7-8 of my GT caravan friends have also checked out. If this is a trend line with an aging fan base not being replaced attendance will of course suffer. At the end of the day you simply must love football to make the time and money investment and I suspect that each graduating class has fewer and fewer that simply love the game. No easy answers.
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I know exactly what you're talking about. Lots of people feel just like you do. When I watch TV, I see lots of empty seats almost everywhere. The teams like Alabama, UGA and LSU have full stadiums. But, if any of these teams had our record over the last five years and were playing them same teams we're playing, they wouldn't be drawing more fans than we do. College football stadiums are basically TV studios these days, and the preferences of the fans don't matter very much. If Tech ever fields a consistently good team, a respectable number of fans will come to the games. But, it will never be like it was back when all our games started at 1:30, we played big name teams from the South, we were very good, there were no pro teams in Atlanta, and there was just one game a week on TV.
 
CiraldoForever said:
I know exactly what you're talking about. Lots of people feel just like you do. When I watch TV, I see lots of empty seats almost everywhere. The teams like Alabama, UGA and LSU have full stadiums. But, if any of these teams had our record over the last five years and were playing them same teams we're playing, they wouldn't be drawing more fans than we do. College football stadiums are basically TV studios these days, and the preferences of the fans don't matter very much. If Tech ever fields a consistently good team, a respectable number of fans will come to the games. But, it will never be like it was back when all our games started at 1:30, we played big name teams from the South, we were very good, there were no pro teams in Atlanta, and there was just one game a week on TV.
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And in those days, people came from all over the state to watch games. Very little of that any more.
 
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