being 1/2 or even 1/4 in the bag at game time is not a bad temporary remedy...eases some of the pain...
Printable View
Always!
Attachment 9958
Attachment 9959
It's the best tailgate experience period. Elite. Duke worthy. Thank you for all you do.
But winning at home would help. Maybe we just need to feed the team some Costco's to fire them up pregame. And let Devildeac's world-class beer selections tempt our opponents pregame hydration. Everybody wins.
Yeah, home attendance is a real chicken/egg conundrum. Is there a good source to get home attendance figures over the last 7-10 years or so?
Better attendance/atmosphere would probably improve our home performance. Better home performance would probably improve home attendance/atmosphere (of course there are other issues with the game day experience at Duke beyond what happens with the field as has been discussed extensively in this thread).
Larger and louder attendance at WW would help , but I believe there might be more to our dismal home performances. Cut said everything was going to be examined. Is it possible that something is wrong with our preparation for home games: Too much family/friends/girlfriend visitation? Curfew violations? The Blue Devil walk? Pregame meal being cooked by a cheater fan?
Just using a few things I know about human nature - and admitting I have no inside info on Cut's program - I think our home crowds hurt us the most when there is a reason to expect a decent crowd (big opponent, senior day, etc) and the guys run out of the tunnel into a deserted stadium. Last year, think about it, our guys played Clemson's Senior Night...and the atmosphere, for senior day, at night, in the Frank....was big time. One week later, they run out to see the clean up crew cowering under cover and no fans in the stadium for their senior day. Say what you want, human nature is a huge factor, and sometimes a terrible crowd runs right into that.
Well there were those other factors you mentioned and they were big factors. Still, it's not what the players dream about for home finale - even if there are factors like this that make it obvious. It doesn't explain 59-7 for sure...but I certainly feel like it was a factor.
True, and I did not intend to absolve anyone from anything...I'm more trying to get to the bottom of what's wrong with Dukes FB program - and I think home attendance is one of the problems. the stadium is a problem, among other handicaps. With a lot of teams, attendance is more a barometer than a cause. With Duke, it's a lot of both IMO, and I've been suffering with Duke FB for a LOOOOOONG time.
I want to do some analysis on our home games in terms of attendance and results. Does anyone know a reliable source for per-game attendance? I started pulling from the ESPN page for the games, but then saw that it listed last year's Wake game as having 20,782 in attendance so obviously those numbers are all worthless.
Since Duke scans every ticket that comes through the gates, they must have an accurate count stored somewhere. (Subtract maybe a couple hundred for the fans that have two tix to make it out and back in.) No idea where they keep that info or if they share it, though.
I know that Coach K (and Mickie more specifically) changed the student section layout in Cameron when they were annoyed that the "big wig" donors sat behind the opponent's basket in the second half of games. They wanted students/people that would be distracting there for FTs, so everything got re-arranged (with grad students now being in both end zones) and undergrads filling in the corners on the "TV" side where grad students used to be. In addition, during the walk-up line debacle at the UNC game where the fire chief shut down admission and said no one can go in, there were empty seats in the student section when it was like 10 minutes to tipoff, Mickie was the one who actually got them to let more people in so the section would be full.
So, they certainly have influence. But it's more if it impacts the actual on court/on field stuff that they'd notice it.
Some off the cuff numbers related to home performance since 2012 (the season where it is reasonable to say we turned the corner). This is for P5 schools (+Notre Dame). Numbers are slightly worse looking only at ACC games, and slightly better if we include all D1 games (Tulane, Troy, etc.) but there isn't much of a difference between the three data sets really. The "cumulative" wins/losses columns are wins/losses from that year to now.
Cumulative Season Points Scored Year Games Wins Losses W L Margin Games under 7 Games under 14 Games under 20 2019 4 1 3 1 3 -59 1 2 2 2018 4 2 6 1 3 -76 0 1 3 2017 6 5 9 3 3 22 1 2 3 2016 4 6 12 1 3 -26 0 0 1 2015 5 8 15 2 3 -14 0 3 3 2014 5 11 17 3 2 39 0 0 1 2013 4 13 19 2 2 9 0 0 1 2012 4 15 21 2 2 -15 0 0 0
FWIW, we've had positive scoring margins in ACC home games twice (2014: +1, 2013: +9)
I bet they do but they aren't about to share that data, since VERY often the number of actual attendees is WAY below the ticket sale number...par example as the French would say, "attendance" at the Syracuse game was 16,286, but butts in seats was a small fraction of that.