I don’t really understand how they gave up on things that had been working. The tracking may have been rudimentary then, but think of the targeted marketing that would be possible today.

While I don’t disagree that a person or people are making way too much to deliver way too little, here are some ideas for next year—
1. Have the option to opt in to purchase potential playoff tickets at time of season ticket sales, or at least make it a one-click transaction.
2. Host a freshmen-centered tailgate, since they generally don’t have their own cars. If it can’t be free, have it accept the dining hall plan instead of just cash.
3. Bring back Aggie Fanatics / Aggie Bucks. Aggie Fanatics was a program in the late 90s where you got a membership card and scanned it at every game to get giveaways and earn Aggie Bucks, which could be redeemed for swag. Incentivized going to more games, even some of the obscure sports if you were trying to earn.
4. Meet townies where they are. Promote in local elementary schools and at the Farmers Market. Woodstock’s Pizza used to say they were the home of the “5th quarter huddle” and you’d see plenty of players there after the game. I remember walking from Toomey to the Hallmark (then Ramada) Inn that G Street would hopping after a win.
5. Low cost/no cost advertising. Examples- change the default no content projector image in the lecture from the UC logo to a game this Saturday splash screen between classes, insert a message on the Unitrans bus destination boards, put table tent cards in the coffee house and dining halls.

They almost had me… Florida nonstop to Sioux Falls for $80 on Allegiant but only flys on like Thursdays and Mondays and I don’t think I can swing the extra days in Sourh Dakota.

my understanding is that student tickets were sponsored so the tickets were free to interested students. I don’t know how it was operationalized though.

hard to say. Also throw in variables of an indoor venue, closer proximity to the ARC and dining hall, perceived lower time investment, and possibly easier ticketing. If attendance is something that Athletics really wanted to understand, I’d suggest they use some measurements— for example theme parks often ask every n-th person coming or going a couple survey questions. Perhaps just as interesting is if they had a survey taker at the dining hall during game time to ask passersby why they chose not to go to the game.

Here is attendance vs approximate venue capacity. Percentage-wise we are near the median.

UIW 1926/6000 =33%
Mercer 8012/10,000 =80%
SDSU 10376/19000 =55%
NDSU 10373/19000 =55%
USD 6231/9000 =66%
UCD 6317/10000 =60%
Idaho 7346/15000 =50%
Montana St 17000/24000 =71%

There are a lot factors we cannot control especially considering this is a late add to a lot of family calendars—finals, office Christmas party, ballet recitals, Aunt Bethany coming to visit. But reducing friction in ticketing software is one that could be controlled.

Ranting on a post game interview is non-productive because the audience is already high-propensity fans and negativity isn’t great advertising. Imagine a stern Charmin bear chastising a janitor for buying store brand toilet paper and how it was unfair to the bears that stayed up all night quilting that double ply. It would work as a comedy bit, but would get weird if they were serious.

We used to play the Yotes semi regularly. As I recall their fans were the least feral of the Dakota schools.

Plough makes a nice dig on the Walter Payton committee in the halftime interview.

ESPN+, Hulu, and Disney+ are separately sold products. As @MTBAggie mentions you can get deals by buying them as a bundle or sometimes as a perk from credit cards, cell phone providers, etc. The update is that ESPN+ and Hulu content, if you subscribe to them, are now visible in the flagship Disney+ app. So you could watch Lion King, the Aggie game, and Jimmy Kimmel all in one app now instead of switching.

@69aggie ESPN and ESPN2 are “linear networks”, that is channels that are only offered through a cable tv package. Said cable package can be through a traditional cable operator like Comcast or Spectrum or virtual cable packager like Hulu+Live TV or YouTube TV. If you are at your house, you can tune in to the channel through the normal means. But maybe you want it on your phone, you can also unlock ESPN/ESPN2 on the ESPN streaming app by proving to the app that you have access to those channels through your cable subscription, usually by logging in with your cable company account info. ESPN/ESPN2 linear are not available for sale a la carte from Disney (at least yet) without paying a cable company. All of the annoying email and pin verification stuff is to crack down on password sharing, to make it less convenient for multiple households to share accounts.

For those watching on tv, the ESPN app continues to work as it has, but starting today, the ESPN+ content is also available within the Disney Plus app, provided you subscribe to both

maybe start telling people a playoff game is +10 social credit points.

they’ve been desperately avoiding wide shots of the crowd. Lot of empty seats even before halftime.

Montana 3 / Tenn St 3 at end of 1st quarter.

in the 2000s the band travel budget fell short so we paid the difference out of our own pockets with some help from the alumni band. To control costs we usually rented vans, either from the university or from Enterprise, drove all night in shifts, and negotiated sleeping on the floors of gymnasiums. Eventually as a safety measure the university decided to require professional bus/air transport and hotel arrangements. So travel kind of stopped since that greatly increased costs.

well they had 6 fewer before playing us.

@AggieFinn Venue capacity is determined by square footage (every human is allocated x square feet), number of exits and the pathways to get there, and number of toilet fixtures. There are ways to safely overload a facility by using portolets, opening extra gates, and hiring extra firefighters and medics to stand by. I haven’t worked with the UCD fire department but my experience elsewhere has been that if you maintain a positive and proactive relationship with the fire marshal they will work with you to a point on the “big” events but will grow weary of granting exceptions when it becomes routine. It’s about safety and probability but also optics. No fire department wants other departments to view them as soft on the NFPA code, kind of this my mustache is bigger than yours thing. So you have to get creative on how you ask for exceptions, make it look like you are “innovating” with processes or equipment.

I was in the car and the car only has certain streamers built in. I get a slightly different mix of stations on the TuneIn car app vs phone app. The car and the phone weren’t syncing for whatever reason so I had to go with what the car could get on its standalone data package without the phone. I think the technology gods knew I was late when they decided not to work right.

I was on the road for part of the game and for whatever reason KHTK wasn’t on TuneIn app so I listened to the Sac radio broadcast. Dear god, it made the clowns on the TV call seem like absolute professionals. But Sportscenter came on after and as much all this NIL and transfer portal business allows big FBS schools to treat FCS like their personal D-league, they were saying it has at least created greater parity among the FBS schools that nobody is unstoppable anymore because the Alabamas of the world don’t have the depth to keep excellent players on the bench for rotation. Those guys transfer to places like Colorado to get playing time. It was an interesting take but sounds like FBS playoff selection might be even more complicated than FCS.

I won’t make it to the game but I need to hire a new third shift janitor. Can anyone put my card up at the Hornet locker room? Senior day, time to think about a career. $19/hr with union benefits.

one of the years at Hughes (maybe late 90s?) was a monsoon. My dad and I wrapped up in rain gear and blue tarp. Still ended up with bronchitis. And the field was a trashed mud pit after 3 games had been held there Friday. I think most schools in the west have gone artificial turf these days so not sure people really appreciate sinking and sliding on muck. Natural grass is still common at the college level in the southeast but a wet September in the south the grass is still growing. By November in Davis the grass wouldn’t be growing much.