Untitled Document
American Army Bucknell Colgate Holy Cross Lafayette Lehigh Navy



Username Post: Lehigh Attendance        (Topic#13508)
Bison89 
Professor
Posts: 5370
Bison89
Loc: Philadelphia
Reg: 11-14-07
05-02-12 08:53 AM - Post#128845    

I do not know if we ever discussed this article that ran in January in the Morning Call:

http://articles.mcall.com/2012-01-31/sports/mc- pat...

It talks about how difficult it is for Lehigh to get a decent crowd at Stabler. Given their NCAA Tournament appearance and big win over Duke, it will be interesting to see if their numbers will increase. Yes, they should, but you never know.
New season, new team, new dream . . .


 
Shot Clock 
Masters Student
Posts: 883

Loc: Arlington VA
Reg: 01-27-06
05-02-12 10:12 AM - Post#128848    
    In response to Bison89

I'm interested too.

Doesn't Lehigh televise a good number of their home games locally? That might hurt attendance too.
B.A. Bucknell University, 1993


 
Bison137 
Professor
Posts: 16147
Bison137
Reg: 01-23-06
05-02-12 10:20 AM - Post#128849    
    In response to Bison89

I imagine their attendance will increase in the upcoming season - but it will still be way too low. True, LU has the issue of the gym not being located on campus - but that is still a very poor excuse for the abysmal attendance figures they have run up over the years. Consider facts such as these:

- Lafayette - who has had much worse teams and plays in a glorified H.S. gym - has had MUCH better attendance figures than LU, despite being a much smaller school and playing in the same area.
- LU is located in the Lehigh Valley - which has a population of close to 1M people - and yet can't draw nearly as many locals as does Bucknell - who plays in an area with a population that is 1/10 that of Lehigh.
- If all student attendance was subtracted from Bucknell's attendance over the last decade, it would still be MUCH higher than LU's total atendance.
- Lehigh likely has at least 10x as many alumni as BU within driving distance of their games.

Yet despite the above factors and a decade of good teams and star players (Savovic, Rowland, Olivero, Knight, Hall, Carrington, McCollum, Knutson, etc), they still don't draw well. Many LU fans are not happy with this and have over the years suggested reasons/solutions for the problem. I think the biggest issue is simply that football and wrestling are the only sports most of their fanbase cares about.

When reading this article, don't forget that Housenick has become a shill who too often makes up stuff as he goes. For example, he claims in the article that "crowds for all three home games the last two weeks hovered around 2,000." The reality is that the average official (inflated) attendance for those three games was a bit over 1500 and that none was as high as 1800. And that includes the Bucknell game where the attendance would have been perhaps 1200 without the Bucknell crowd. One good measure of basketball interest was Lu's attendance for the Saturday nationally-televised semi-final vs a very good American team. Official attendance was around 1200 - with actual attendance lower.

Having said that, I expect LU will do somewhat better this year, with the carryover from the Duke win and it being CJ's last season. Still, it won't be anywhere near what it should be - which is frustrating to many of the true LU basketball fans.


BTW, here are LU's official attendace figures for the last decade. They are all inflated by a fair amount but are still interesting.

2012 - 1332 (11-3 PL record *)
2011 - 937 (6-8)
2010 - 1285 (10-4 *)
2009 - 1235 (5-9)
2008 - 1254 (7-7)
2007 - 1362 (7-7)
2006 - 1474 (11-3)
2005 - 1501 (8-6 #)
2004 - 1619 (10-4 *)
2003 - 1626 (8-6)

* = PL Champ
# = Record before having to forfeit virtually all games.




 
Bison137 
Professor
Posts: 16147
Bison137
Reg: 01-23-06
05-02-12 10:24 AM - Post#128850    
    In response to Shot Clock

  • Shot Clock Said:
I'm interested too.

Doesn't Lehigh televise a good number of their home games locally? That might hurt attendance too.




No, it's Lafayette who has the local TV coverage. Despite the TV and having much worse teams, LC still typically outdraws LU by a wide margin.




 
Lee Hai Phan 
Pre-Frosh
Posts: 4

Reg: 03-14-10
05-02-12 12:05 PM - Post#128855    
    In response to Bison137

Just a correction: most of the Lehigh M&W home games are on TV2 Service Electric cable.

Not sure why attendance is so low, but there was professional basketball here a few years ago (Valley Dawgs coached by Darryl Dawkins of NBA) that drew even smaller crowds than Lehigh does.

 
Bison137 
Professor
Posts: 16147
Bison137
Reg: 01-23-06
05-02-12 12:16 PM - Post#128856    
    In response to Lee Hai Phan

  • Lee Hai Phan Said:
Just a correction: most of the Lehigh M&W home games are on TV2 Service Electric cable.

Not sure why attendance is so low, but there was professional basketball here a few years ago (Valley Dawgs coached by Darryl Dawkins of NBA) that drew even smaller crowds than Lehigh does.





Thanks. Did not know that.




 
Bison89 
Professor
Posts: 5370
Bison89
Loc: Philadelphia
Reg: 11-14-07
05-02-12 02:20 PM - Post#128862    
    In response to Bison137

One other thing that the article suggested is that there might not be enough transportation from the main campus to the stadium. It would seem to be fairly simple to schedule more buses 30 minutes prior to game time. I wonder if this has been tried before. Do any LU readers know?
New season, new team, new dream . . .


 
Bison137 
Professor
Posts: 16147
Bison137
Reg: 01-23-06
05-02-12 04:18 PM - Post#128873    
    In response to Bison89

I think this may be a chicken-egg situation. Why schedule more buses when almost no-one is using the ones that are already running? When I've been at LU games, the buses that arrive have plenty of empty seats.




 
Bison54 
PhD Student
Posts: 1800
Bison54
Reg: 11-18-09
05-02-12 05:02 PM - Post#128878    
    In response to Lee Hai Phan

  • Lee Hai Phan Said:
Not sure why attendance is so low, but there was professional basketball here a few years ago (Valley Dawgs coached by Darryl Dawkins of NBA) that drew even smaller crowds than Lehigh does.


Anybody remember Harthorne Wingo and the Allentown Jets?


 
Bison89 
Professor
Posts: 5370
Bison89
Loc: Philadelphia
Reg: 11-14-07
05-02-12 09:11 PM - Post#128884    
    In response to Bison54

I had never heard of the Allentown Jets, but here is some info on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allentown_Jets

Looks like they closed shop after the 1980~81 season. Hmmm, I wonder if poor attendance was the problem.
New season, new team, new dream . . .


 
Bison54 
PhD Student
Posts: 1800
Bison54
Reg: 11-18-09
Lehigh Attendance
05-03-12 08:03 AM - Post#128907    
    In response to Bison89

When I was at BU as a student, I made several trips to see the Allentown Jets play the Sunbury Mercuries. http://dailyitem.com/0100_news/x691315882/ Mercurie...
IIRC, the Jets were good and the Mercs were not. They played in a high school gym that was downright dangerous (stage and a balank wall close to the two goals)and maybe drew a decent crowd, which seemed bigger because of the small gym.


Edited by Bison54 on 05-03-12 08:06 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
res 
Masters Student
Posts: 839

Reg: 03-21-06
05-03-12 08:38 AM - Post#128909    
    In response to Bison54

You're really old if you remember King Corcoran and the Pottstown Firebirds. Different sport, I know...


 
RichH 
Sophomore
Posts: 159

Age: 76
Reg: 01-30-12
05-03-12 01:58 PM - Post#128920    
    In response to res

OK, an old fart,, remember King fondly. They were fun to watch and the beer was cheap

 
Bucknell73 
Senior
Posts: 304

Reg: 10-09-07
Re: Lehigh Attendance
05-03-12 04:41 PM - Post#128930    
    In response to Bison54

Wow. Don't remember the Mercuries. Used to go to Trenton Colonials games back in the day.

Jack Ramsey played for the Mercuries? His son was in my Bucknell class.

 
BisonWBBPxP 
Pre-Frosh
Posts: 5

Age: 44
Reg: 12-03-10
05-04-12 01:55 PM - Post#128939    
    In response to Bucknell73

And Jim Boeheim played in the league as well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scranton_Miners

 
bison75 
Masters Student
Posts: 487

Reg: 01-26-06
05-04-12 02:34 PM - Post#128941    
    In response to BisonWBBPxP

Wish I still had my old Wilkes-Barre Barons tee. Stan Pawlak was the man!

 
bison63 
Postdoc
Posts: 3857

Reg: 01-23-06
Lehigh Attendance
05-04-12 03:30 PM - Post#128943    
    In response to bison75

Did go see the Mercs play in the early '60's. Can't remember the opponent, but their star player was Bill Spivey. Does anybody recall him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Spivey

 
Icon Legend Permissions Topic Options
Report Post

Quote Post

Quick Reply

Print Topic

Email Topic

2281 Views



Copyright © 2004-2012 Basketball U. Terms of Use for our Site and Privacy Policy are applicable to you. All rights reserved.
Basketball U. and its subsidiaries are not affiliated in any way with any NCAA athletic conference or member institution.
FusionBB™ Version 2.1 | ©2003-2007 InteractivePHP, Inc.
Execution time: 0.014 seconds.   Total Queries: 8   Zlib Compression is on.
All times are (GMT -0500) Eastern. Current time is 04:32 AM
Top