"...this is also quite possibly because Seattle is a garbage town and watching college football offered a brief respite from the endless, endless stream of trash"
This is absolutely hilarious. I'm also curious, Leland, why do you feel this way about Seattle?
Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino. What have we Cal fans done to deserve this run of futility? We've come close SO many times. And now, with attendance coming back and the Bears poised to have one of their best teams ever, we're staring down the barrel of a cancelled season. : (
Looks like the attendance decline corresponds with the P12's new TV deals with ESPN and Fox which means a bunch of 7:30pm kickoffs. Back when the Bears played on Versus or FSN or no TV and you knew most kickoffs were between noon and 4pm I think a lot more casual fans would show up. Kickoff times have a bigger influence than product on the field.
Seemed like the lesson of the Tedford era was that the fans start coming back in the third year of winning. If perhaps we can count Wilcox's second year as a "win" (finished .500, but that was better than expected), you'd expect attendance to rise in 2020. Now of course COVID will be an unusual factor working against that, but I'd expect more interest in the Bears for this upcoming season, whether people can attend or not.
Hopefully with the Raiders leaving for the desert, Cal is able to pick up a few thousand fans as they are the only major football team within an hour's drive. I would have been more optimistic we can start to pull in some casuals if it weren't for the pandemic.
This is more optimistic than I thought. I'm curious to see in a COVID-19 era what impact this will have on attendance, whether or not we play this season or witness a deferral until 2021.
Stanfurd topping Cal in attendance*
*This is what an average 73.4% attendance looks like:
https://twitter.com/insidenu/status/1167888672064061440
"...this is also quite possibly because Seattle is a garbage town and watching college football offered a brief respite from the endless, endless stream of trash"
This is absolutely hilarious. I'm also curious, Leland, why do you feel this way about Seattle?
Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino. What have we Cal fans done to deserve this run of futility? We've come close SO many times. And now, with attendance coming back and the Bears poised to have one of their best teams ever, we're staring down the barrel of a cancelled season. : (
Looks like the attendance decline corresponds with the P12's new TV deals with ESPN and Fox which means a bunch of 7:30pm kickoffs. Back when the Bears played on Versus or FSN or no TV and you knew most kickoffs were between noon and 4pm I think a lot more casual fans would show up. Kickoff times have a bigger influence than product on the field.
Seemed like the lesson of the Tedford era was that the fans start coming back in the third year of winning. If perhaps we can count Wilcox's second year as a "win" (finished .500, but that was better than expected), you'd expect attendance to rise in 2020. Now of course COVID will be an unusual factor working against that, but I'd expect more interest in the Bears for this upcoming season, whether people can attend or not.
Hopefully with the Raiders leaving for the desert, Cal is able to pick up a few thousand fans as they are the only major football team within an hour's drive. I would have been more optimistic we can start to pull in some casuals if it weren't for the pandemic.
This is more optimistic than I thought. I'm curious to see in a COVID-19 era what impact this will have on attendance, whether or not we play this season or witness a deferral until 2021.