T-Dog wrote:I was talking about in relation to the CAA being low on average attendance compared to the SWAC, SoCon, MEAC, Big Sky and now the MVFC (which was given a big boost by NDSU and SDSU).
Going by this year's numbers, even if ODU has 14,000 per game for six home games, it'll only bring the average up from 8,954 to 9,341 (an increase of 387 people), which would bring it up to 6th in front of the Ivy and Southland.
As has been already pointed out the CAA was 8th out of 15 conferences in attendance. The CAA was less than 100 in avg per game attendance behind the Ivy, a little over 200 behind the Southland, and less than 500 behind the MEAC. But the CAA is like a tale of 2 halves. The problem with the CAA is the absolute piddling attendance figures from the CAA North. Here's how the North teams' avg attendance stacked up out of 118 teams listed:
-UMass: 12,383: 18th
-UNH: 8,000: 50th
-URI: 4,853: 84th
-Maine: 4,693 86th (unbelieveable for a playoff team that also hosted the #1)
-Hofstra: 3,604: 98th
-Northeastern: 2,937: 105th
Adding up the CAA Norths total attendance for 33 games it was 204,283, and avg of only 6,190 a game. If the CAA North was a conference, they would rank 12th behind the Big South.
If you took the CAA's South attendance figures (mainly due to UD and JMU) it was 440,387/divided by the 39 games and it came out to 11,266. If the CAA South was a conference it would rank 3rd behind only the SWAC and the So-Con.
And the attendance disparity between the North and the South is going to grow even wider in 2011', as JMU will have their expansion from 15,500 to about 24,500 complete, and ODU will become a full fledged member. JMU I suspect will jump to around 18-20k in avg attendance given their post 2004 NC history:
-05' 13,525 (14.5k capacity)
-06' 15,133 (14.5k capacity)
-07' 14,511 (14.5k capacity)
-08' : 15,362 (15.5k capacity)
With the excitement from the stadium upgrade JMU will likely pull 15-18k for the non HC and Parents' Weekend Games, around 20k for HC, and could very well sell out the Parents' Weekend game at 24,500.
I suspect in 2011 with UD, JMU, and ODU the CAA South could very well have 2 of the top 5 and 3 of the top 8-10 teams in avg attendance (assuming ODU avg somewhere between 15-18k in 2011')
http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/fo ... e/2008.pdf