Bengal B, those are official NCAA attendance stats, lifted from www.ncaa.org/stats. They're valid... They guage the actual attendance versus the actual seating capacity of the venue... In other words, it rated teams by the percentages they could fill their venue, and not necessarily just gross attendance numbers... It shows that there are teams out there that fill out their attendance numbers and then some...They're over their capacity, which indicates enough demand to warrant an increase in their seating capacity... In LSU's case, we are not selling out every seat, every time...and if we can't average out to 100% or more...we don't need a huge southern upper deck that will be FILLED with empty seats that no one sits in for non-conference games... End of story.
The answer to that is to schedule better non-conference foes. It isn't very interesting to watch 49-10 blowouts of La. Tech. Schedule mid-level teams in the non-con games and they will fill the decks, all decks!
Let's not knock Kent State too much. It produced our head coach! Better OOC competition is the key to full occupancy. For SEC games, even against State and Vandy, the stadium will be full, as it will be for Oregon State. Bank on that. My uncle tailgates in his RV weekly, and many of the people who tailgate in his area talk about watching the games from their RV's when a weak opponent is played.
I don't think it should matter about the opponent. I'm there to watch the Tigers. People think we need an expansion? Thats a joke! Penn State averaged 101% attendance last year, their worst season in like 50 years. Home games for them were Temple, Boston College, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Indiana. We would have pulled 98% attendance with that schedule. I don't like to watch Houston, or Troy State either, but I will definitely be there to watch the Tigers beat up on them!
That's true, and you live in Baton Rouge. If I still lived in B.R., I'd be at all of the home games too, regardless of opponent. But people are not going to travel from out-of-state or far away in-state as readily for weak in-state and I-AA competition. I'm going to go to the Oregon State game, but if it was ULM, I wouldn't bother getting to B.R. from Dallas. OSU is worth the trip and the shuffling of my normal work schedule.
I don't think we ever had over 100% during the nineties and probably some of the eithties. Even without selling out Tiger Stadium for all games each season during the nineties, they DID add the East Upper Deck. I don't think 100% attendance is totally necessary before another expansion is attempted in the future. As long as they have either suites or club seats that will help pay for the expansions, I think it would be feasible to expand in the South endzone. I am sure the Georgia, Florida, Auburn and possibly the Arkansas game this year could have sold another 5 or 10 thousands more seats if they were available.
