The NCAA released 2010 attendance figures this week (PDF). Pitt was 36th nationally in attendance with an average attendance of 10,843 per game.
As far as the Big East goes here’s how the schools ranked:
Syracuse (#2) — 22,312
Louisville (#3) — 21,832
Marquette (#11) — 15,586
Georgetown (#25) — 12,675
Connecticut (#32) — 11,569
West Virginia (#33) — 11,529
Pitt (#36) — 10,843
Villanova (#38) — 10,511
St. John’s (#57) — 8431
Seton Hall (#62) — 7937
Notre Dame (#64) — 7785
DePaul (#67) — 7676
Cincinnati (#71) — 7344
Providence (#76) — 7043
Rutgers (#97) — 5602
USF — 4230
Pitt finished 7th in the Big East in attendance. No one is going to come close to matching Syracuse or Louisville. Syracuse has the dome and Louisville has a brand new arena that has capacity of over 20K.
Marquette impresses that they continue to fill the Bradley Center so well. Georgetown and UConn boost their numbers by playing a bunch of games in big arenas. St. John’s may have started winning back fans, but they obviously have a way to go. Same with Cinci. Mildly surprised DePaul did as well as they did. Alumni of other schools showing up? USF, yuck.
The Big East cracked 3 million in total attendance this year: 3,170,540, but finished second to the Big 10 in attendance/game. The NCAA also listed top-30 teams that had the highest attendance for home, road and neutral games. Pitt finished at #29 on that list (damn those early exits in the NCAA and BET).
Now to dig a little into Pitt’s numbers. Rush the Court got me thinking about this with their look at the overall numbers.
Moving on to some other thoughts, who are the schools that generally surprised us with a lack of support (or expected support)? Removing any of the above from our list, here’s our top eight.
We hate to bust on Pitt at 86.7%, but come on Panther fans… you’re the only hoops game in town and your arena isn’t all that big at 12,508. Considering your team ended up as a #1 seed last season, how do you not fill that place?
It is surprising to me that Pitt didn’t even crack 90% capacity. The team was top5 or 6 all season. Expectations were high all season. And despite the disappointment of how the season ended, it is hard to argue that the team didn’t meet expectations during the regular season.
One of the factors that worked against that, the non-con. Pitt played a very good schedule, but the games were all neutral sites. I realize that is not uncommon for upper echelon teams, but it really bit Pitt this year for the numbers. Especially with the move of the City Game to the Con as a neutral site.
Here are the attendance figures for the non-con home games:
Nov. 8 — Rhode Island: 9256 *
Nov. 10 — UIC: 9148
Nov. 13 — North Florida: 10,052
Nov. 23 — Robert Morris: 10,121
Nov. 27 – Penn: 10,594
Dec. 4 — Rider: 8719 **
Dec. 8 — Delaware St.: 8520
Dec. 18 — UMES: 9515
Dec. 22 — American: 9489
The total attendance during the 9 non-con games at the Pete was 85,414. That’s an average attendance of 9490.44. Roughly 75.9% of capacity. Not particularly good.
The asterisks, though, do provide some explanation. The home opener which should be a sell-out any other time. Especially since Pitt got to be the opening game of college basketball was poorly planned by ESPN. The Steelers had a Monday Night Football game at the Bengals that same night.
The December 4 game on Saturday was also the same day as the season finale in Pitt football at Cinci. That presumably played a role in dipping the attendance for a Saturday afternoon game.
Looking at a couple other dates. December 18 (UMES) was the last day of Final Exams and December 22 (American) was during Winter Break.
The November 10 (UIC) and December 8 (Del. St.) games were on Wednesdays. There’s no excuse for that except that apparently no one wanted to go to bad non-con games mid-week.
Now for the Big East slate:
Dec. 27 — UConn: 12,725
Jan. 8 — Marquette: 11,438 *
Jan. 15 — Seton Hall: 9236 **
Jan. 17 — Syracuse: 12,925
Jan. 24 — Notre Dame: 12,591
Feb. 5 — Cinci: 12,615
Feb. 16 — USF: 12,519
Feb. 24 — WVU: 12,876
Mar. 5 — Villanova: 12,843
That’s a total Big East attendance figure of 109,768. The average attendance of these games was 12,196.44. That’s roughly 97.5% of capacity. To be honest, it could have been better. Again to the asterisks.
January 8th game with Marquette overlapped with the MBVA Bowl. Obviously it wasn’t well attended down in Birmingham, but you figure it cost Pitt about a 1000 fans between those who actually went and those who stayed home to watch both games.
The January 15 game with Seton Hall was killed because the Steelers had their home playoff game with the Baltimore Ravens. That accounts for being 2000-3000 under the expected numbers. But for those overlaps in the conference slate, Pitt would have probably slightly exceeded the stated capacity on average in the conference side of things.
Roughly speaking Pitt lost about 5000-7000 fans in attendance from football overlaps overall. At best it would have boosted Pitt’s total average attendance to a range of 11,121 to 11,232. That would have bumped Pitt to 34th overall nationally. Sadly, percentage of capacity would have stayed under 90%. Even pretending that Pitt could have/should have had 7000 more fans but for football conflicts, that would have knocked capacity percentage up to 89.8%.
Really, Pitt’s non-con schedule isn’t out of whack with what most programs — especially the upper-tier programs do. Still, most at least try to set up at least on really good true home game each year. Pitt hurt itself with over-reliance on neutral site games to get good games during the non-con. That cost the program some money in ticket, parking and concession sales.
Pitt fans still need to take some blame. Not for the overlap games, but for the other ones they stayed away from attending. Seems to be some creeping complacency and only willing to show up for the “big” games.
Now for some numbers from other schools, just for fun.
Memphis (#8) — 16,768
Penn St. (#70) — 7457
UCF (#81) — 6370
Temple (#90) — 5925
East Carolina — 4566
TCU — 4285
Duquesne — 3899
Houston — 3281
SMU — 1970
Uh, Houston? You really need to work on that. I know you have some history and any move to the Big East would be based on football, but, uh, no. That’s just sad. The year after making the NCAA and getting rid of Penders (who was not liked by the locals). Get it together.
SMU. No chance.
TCU, there better be a bounce soon.
Temple. So you average less than 6000 per game with a good basketball team? That goes with the whopping 20,515 average for football in what was a really, really good year. Yeah, suffice to say the Big East is not inviting you back anytime soon.
Memphis is impressive… in basketball. In football, yeesh. 23,918 average. Fed Ex money can’t mask that.
Other than UCF the other possible entries into the BigEast(should they split) are pretty horrid in hoops.
As for Pitt, yes complacency has set in to a certain extent. Whats noticeable as well at The Pete, is besides the student section, the vast majority of the fans do not do much cheering at all. It’s like the A & B sections of a Penguin game, these people are like a bunch of stiffs.
I don’t know what it is, they expect to be entertained, they’re too high & mighty to cheer, whatever, but it’s piss poor. If you’re not going to get involved in the game and egg your team on to win, JUST STAY THE FREAK HOME !
As he mentions that Pitt has only had so many number 1 picks since 1990, check it out.
“Baldwin becomes just the 6th Pitt player since 1990 to be selected in the first round, joining Jeff Otah (2008), Darelle Revis (2007), Larry Fitzgerald (2004), Rueben Brown (1995) and Sean Gilbert (1992) in that club.”
He then goes even farther and suggests we haven’t even had that many since 1980:
“Pitt has also had only 19 guys selected in the first round since 1980 and Baldwin becomes the 20th.”
If you care to read the whole POS article, here it is:
link to post-gazette.com
Guess he never saw that Yahoo Sports/Rivals article last year, that had Pitt among the Top 5 of all colleges since 1980 with the players that performed the best in the NFL. He must have missed that one. Go figure.
I guess it’s always a good time to bash Pitt sports at the PG. Also to note, not a word or an iota of a word on the Front Page of the PG, nor on the Front WebPage of the Sports section of the PG concerning Pitt’s Baldwin being drafted in the 1rst round. And he didn’t even have to ‘Sneak In’. Oh if not for our dear friends over at the PG what on earth would we do.
HTP & FUPG
I would like to know TCU’s home FB average. I believe UCF’s average was around 40,000 while Villanova did not exceed 12,500 since that is about its stadium’s capacity
“Baldwin becomes just the 6th Pitt player since 1990 to be selected in the first round, joining Jeff Otah (2008), Darelle Revis (2007), Larry Fitzgerald (2004), Rueben Brown (1995) and Sean Gilbert (1992) in that club.”
The word “just” could have been omitted. It was Zeise’s choice to add “just”. This is clearly an attempt to belittle Pitt.
Then this: (not satisfied, he takes it a step farther)
“Pitt has also had only 19 guys selected in the first round since 1980 and Baldwin becomes the 20th.”
Again the word “only” could have not been used.
Again it’s used at his option in an attempt to belittle Pitt and it’s football teams’ accomplishments. 20 players drafted in the 1rst Round in the last 30 years is nothing to be ashamed of. That is better than most schools playing D1 college football. And considering the whole decade of the 1990’s was pretty much a wipeout it’s damn good.
Again this is taking a positive (having a player chosen in the 1rst Round) and spinning it into a negative. And then the kicker is, using two examples and trying to promote that as being way less than average, when it isn’t at all. It’s really cheap journalism.
Now, my football tix, since 67′, were always in my Dad’s name, (football letterman), until he passed away in 2008. Guess I should have lied and just sent the check, now, I’m at the bottom I guess. Told this whole story to several people, bottom line, “you need to donate more”. See ya, games are on t.v..
Have had other issues. 2 seats in football club box. Tried to get 4 more, all kinds of b.s., I said, there are only 500 of us in the club box, with 1000 empty seats every game except ND and WVU, don’t you at least want to make 60 bucks, 80 bucks oer ticket, whatever, on four more tix? “We can’t do that”, “I’ll have to check with so-so”, and on and on.
Finally, just went on stub hub and got all 4 tix for 50 bucks. Weren’t close to us, but, since no one is around us, we were all together.
I was just waiting for an usher to come down, and say, “those aren’t their seats, they have to move”, with 500 empty seats as far as the eye can see.
I think I may have been typing this from behind bars, had that happened.
Anyhow Jason, over the many years, Pitt has never been known as fan friendly or convenient for ticket holders. I’m not talking about fan friendly at the game, or for the kids, talking about the ticket office being able to make fan friendly decisions. It’s like the government down there, just layers and layers of sheeple.
Anyhow, they asket to come down and pick our seats 10 years ago, every cool, until my Dad passed, got football tix in my own name, suddenly, I wasn’t such a big Pitt fan!!
And with more and more hoops tickets becoming available most games these days, it would save a heck of alot to just pick and choose there, as well. In fact, I know personally last season I had people offer me free tickets for at least five or six games. Hate to do this, but in these times it’s certainly becoming an option.
That’s not what we’re talking about. Apparently, the ushers at the games, know, if there were no tix sold in a particular section, and yet, if they see a couple, sitting in an empty section, even in the 6th or 7th inning, they tell them to show their tix and make them move.
Maybe this is an urban legend, but, I did hear stories that in a game that went past midnight, extra innings, only a few thousand, if that, left in PNC, they had the ushers still checking tix of people that moved down. Talk about customer service.
I’m all for “rules are rules”, but, there is also a thing called, “taking care of a customer”, especially when it causes no harm.
Anyhow, still have my football tix, can’t beat the club seating. I will tell you, in case you ever have family or friends coming in, I even got club tix on stub hub for Notre Dame. Got 4 for 200.00, and the guy threw in his parking pass too.
Looking forward to the season more than I have in many years, I’m pumped, haven’t let some bad customer service experiences taint my feeling for Pitt or the teams. Hail to Pitt, have a good day!
Ha ha, in the four or five years he was able to attend, into his early 80’s, he rarely left his outdoor seat, and never because of the cold, but, I was always running inside!!! ha ha LMAO
They don’t make em’ like that generation anymore!!
Good day to you!!
Good Luck.
Then one year, I paid, but split with a guy. When we divided them up, didn’t want to be a heel, ended up giving him most of the good games.
Hey, no one has answered, or I missed it, aren’t the Pitt hoops games sold out for the year?? I mean, I know, the attendance Chas is talking about is how many people show up. I thought it was the hardest ticket in Pgh. to get a few years ago, season sold out, waiting list????
They announce 12,500 for Big East games where there are a thousand empty seats, and they announce 10,000 for North Florida when the place is half empty. Its meaningless. Except to say that the reality is worse than the numbers