Editorial: NCAA should eliminate Division I attendance mandate
College football attendance is declining nationwide. Student attendance at games has been abysmal. Such is the case at Central Michigan University.
CMU averaged 15,065 people in the stands at Kelly/Shorts Stadium this season. The stadium has a capacity of 30,255.
The NCAA requires CMU to average at least 15,000 in actual or paid attendance for all home football games on a two-year rolling basis to remain a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision.
As mediums by which fans can consume college football increase, it has become clear the NCAA attendance mandate should be done away with.
Instead, the NCAA should consider incentivizing schools to acheive higher attendance. This would encourage schools to invest in the gameday experience rather than staying compliant.
As we have seen, schools such as CMU have found ways to stay above the required attendance average, if just barely. Many schools sell tickets to marketing companies in order to meet the number the NCAA set in 2002.
At CMU, sports marketing company IMG College purchases tickets to help CMU meet the attendance requirement. The company aggregates sponsorship and multimedia rights for universities, and has bought 2,032 CMU football tickets during the past two years — 859 in 2015 and 1,173 in 2014.
The number of tickets sold to IMG is determined each year based on how confident CMU is it will make the 15,000 mark. In 2013-14, CMU was heavily reliant on IMG College distributing 5,500 season tickets to stay compliant with the NCAA.
Athletics Director Dave Heeke said it plainly on Jan. 7.
“Shouldn’t we just be able to play football if we want with no one in (the stadium)? I don’t care. Now, we’ve been forced to develop ways to meet that,” he said.
Heeke’s makes a valid point. We agree with him.
There is less incentive for member schools to put more fans in the seats. Make no mistake about it. Television is what drives the money behind college football.
The Mid-American Conference signed a 13-year television deal with ESPN worth more than $100 million, which guarantees broadcast coverage of every MAC football game. It has hurt CMU’s home football game attendance the most.
This sends a mixed message to schools like CMU: Average a certain number of fans in the seats at each game, but the conference signs a lucrative broadcast contract so those same games are available to watch for people who would rather stay home.
MAC teams have been playing games on Tuesday, Wednesday and occasionally Thursday and Friday at the end of the regular season since 1999.
The purpose, conference officials say, is to give the MAC national exposure it can’t attract when competing against a Saturday ESPN TV schedule packed with dozens of other larger conference games.
It is unrealistic to expect member schools to hit a marker for attendance with these TV deals in place.
This does not mean television deals should be done away with. But the NCAA’s attendance mandate should be.
Student and alumni fans are much more likely to watch a CMU football game from the comfort of their own homes than sit in bad weather on a school or work night watching an underwhelming game against Eastern Michigan or Miami (Ohio).
The numbers continue to prove it every year.
The overall attendance for this season’s Tuesday game against Toledo was 12,429, well below the average home game in 2015, according to CMU’s 2015 Paid Football Attendance Summary. The game ranked fifth out of the six home games in total attendance and fourth in terms of student attendance.
Meanwhile, CMU’s Tuesday, Nov. 10 game against Toledo on ESPN2 was the most-watched game at Kelly/Shorts Stadium in 2015, with 561,000 people tuned in at any given minute, according to ESPN and Nielsen ratings.
Midweek games are inconvenient not just for many students, but also for alumni traveling to Mount Pleasant on gameday.
Then there is the dreaded Black Friday game.
Eastern Michigan came to Mount Pleasant on Black Friday in 2013, and lost 42-10. A total of 5,214 people were announced to have attended the game. The Eagles visited CMU again last season, and another small crowd showed up.
Head Coach John Bonamego criticized the placement of that game during the week leading up to CMU’s least-attended game of the season.
“I think we should make every effort in the future to try and schedule these things before Thanksgiving, before students leave to go home,” Bonamego said. “When we are all kind of struggling for attendance across the board, it just doesn’t make sense to schedule a game when you don’t have anybody.”
The fan experience should be what college football places its highest priority on.
The current rule the NCAA has in place for home-game attendance does a disservice to member schools whose product is now broadcast around the country for free.
As the big business of college football grows, so does apathy from the people whose participation in the spectacle should mean the most.
