Dome Ticket Sales Poor/Awesome, Depending On Who You Ask
by Sean Keeley on Aug 28, 2009 6:06 PM EDT
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PrintI had heard some grumblings recently that attendance for the Minnesota game was looking soft. I was hoping for the best that it was just that, grumblings. Then Dave Rahme posted an article this morning with "There are plenty of seats available for opener" in the title, which, I believe is a bad sign.
Rahme didn't throw out a number, the one I had heard independently was in the 29K range (the Dome holds 49K+). Rahme noted that the school had sent out an email to those who already had tickets in a Hail Mary attempt to get them to buy more, cutting the price down to $15. I mean, that's Touchdown Town-type numbers. SU and The Dome must be shaking in their boots...
NOT SO FAST!, SU executive senior athletics director Scott Sidwell said to Rahme later in the day. All is well! Nothing to see here!
As of today, Sidwell said, the Orange has sold more than 34,000 tickets to the game in the 49,000-plus seat Carrier Dome. He said ticket sales are ahead of the pace four years ago when 45,000 eventually attended SU's opener vs. West Virginia, and that was a Big East game between two longtime rivals.
Sidwell told me SU has sold roughly 7,000 tickets to the game over the last two days.
The old "compare it to how things were four years ago" tricker. Well played. God know you don't want to bring up last year's home opener against Akron. Sidwell also mentions that Haily Mary email with the massive price reduction has been in the works for weeks and isn't a reactionary move to offset the lack of butts in seats. Uh-huh...
The Post-Standard writers have certainly done their parts, printing missives from former players and giving you every conceivable option available to purchase your tickets. Of course, we're still waiting on one more...the golden goose of the ticket sales push...the yearly Bud Poliquin column in which he tries to convince you to buy season tickets.
He's late, last year's came in mid-August. I'm thinking there's no way we get past Monday before this year's.
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unfortunately I can't make it
I would absolutely love to see the city support the team. From most accounts, the players have been working harder than they ever have before. They are underdogs for virtually every game this season. The coach has pleaded across the country for fans to come out and go to the games.
We all would love to think that we’ve put the past 4 years behind us, and a great way to do it would to actually go to the game.
Hopefully I convinced someone to go. Tickets are cheap anyway.
I bought the Minnesota minipack
I think its a great deal. Its $33 per ticket and you sit in the lower level end zone. I mean they’re not the greatest seats when they’re going the other way, but then again its just $33.
by Rocket Ship Science on Aug 28, 2009 7:26 PM EDT reply actions
Just wanted to point out....
All SU Freshman got free tickets to the game. As a season ticket holder I kind of want some money back for the first game then. Granted, my cousin’s gonna try and make the trip up to see it so it might not go to waste
He's going to need to borrow a student ID
to get in with a student ticket
Syracuse '12
by blackknight76 on Aug 28, 2009 9:17 PM EDT up reply actions
MARRONE is the password!
see ya all at the game!
by SUFAN4LIFE34 on Aug 29, 2009 9:50 AM EDT up reply actions
I just got an email for Time Warner customers...
“SELLOUT” will get you $15 3rd deck seats.
The 'Cuse is in tha house, oh my God oh my God.
university is getting what they deserve!!
you let a lame duck coach sit in office for 4 years of historically atrocious football, show the fan base you really dont care about them (usc game) and expect people to just rush the gates for a home opener v. minnesota? i’m going to the game but i can completely understand why people are not. i’m sure there are a lot of people in the syracuse area who aren’t going to games until the cantor/gross posse leave!!
Two things wrong with your statement.
1. The USC game is a tremendous idea. Granted, the game was originally in the dome, but there is a huge fanbase in NYC that will attend these games, and if you are too lazy to drive from CNY then wow.
2. Gross has done more for SU Athletics in the last 4 years than you can believe. HE has brought most of the olympic sports to prominence, the SU Lax team is better than ever, built the Melo Center, and finally started reinvesting in our athletics program unlike the previous regime.
In the words of Jim Calhoun – Go and get some facts, then come back and see me.
what are these olympic sports you speak of?
i think “noro” is daryl gross’ own handle. congrats sean u got gross postin on ur site. usc would have been a tremendous game for SYRACUSE. I LIVE IN NYC, and i think that game should be played in cuse. i dont think it would have been too difficult for the good doctor to find a new opponent for the game in the meadowlands in 2012. i know how much he likes backing out of football games (wyoming for 1 example, vtech for another) so he could have dropped a diff game off the schedule to make room for it.
and dont get me started on lax. giving daryl gross credit for the lacrosse team is completely out of line. ever hear of roy simmons? him and his son combined for about 67 years of lacrosse tradition.
but yeah, the melo center should be cool. haha
I can with most certainty say
that noro is not in fact Daryl Gross.
He did back out on Wyoming but he didn’t back out on Va Tech, they never began the series and cancelled it before any damage could be done. Neither team’s schedules got hurt by the ordeal.
Our total athletic rankings have never been as high as they have in recent years, and that includes the dysmal G-Rob Era in football.
I don’t think Gross is a great AD by any stretch, but he is definitely doing some things that are really helping the University as a whole, and with the Meadowlands he is infusing some much needed money into the football program. It would be awesome to have USC come to the dome, but that was assumed at the time, USC wasn’t ever going to play us in ’Cuse. This has been in the works for a while.
Syracuse '12
by blackknight76 on Aug 29, 2009 2:07 PM EDT up reply actions
Playing someone in NYC is a good idea
Playing USC at all is crazy. We should not schedule non-conference games we have no chance of winning. We aren’t some broke mid-major looking for payday games.
This is in 2011/2012…who knows how good we will be then?
I don’t think we’ll be to the point where we’re challenging USC, but I think we’ll be able to give them a game at that point if Doug is really working out and the team is on the rebound.
Syracuse '12
by blackknight76 on Aug 29, 2009 2:23 PM EDT up reply actions
The thing is...
… unless everything goes right and we’re a top-15 caliber team challenging for the Big East title, we won’t give USC a game (unless they pick us as their random game to choke on, which they won’t, because we are not a Pac 10 team). Unless we are a top-5 caliber team or USC ends their run of being a top-5 caliber team every year, we aren’t going to win.
Did you expect us to win against Notre Dame last year?
I realize that’s an outlier, but still, if a shitty G-Rob team can pull out a win against ND, then I think a Marronified Syracuse has a chance.
Go, fight, and win.
I didn't think it was impossible
… because ND was a shitty team that went 6-6, beat a 6-6 WAC team in a bowl game, and would have finished last in the Big East (yes, behind us and Louisville). Based on their play in the last five or ten years, it was not unreasonable to assume we’d be able to beat them.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t schedule tough games (though quite frankly the Kansas State / Rutgers school of scheduling makes a lot of sense for a bad / rebuilding team; you just have to remember to stop doing it when you’re no longer bad and/or rebuilding), but USC’s been too consistently good to schedule until we’re already consistenlty a top-25 team at least (certainly at minimum at least a consistently above-.500 team), and I wouldn’t do it unless I had a consistently top-15 team.
I don't understand
how you can expect CNY fans to go to NYC…
It’s not being lazy, it’s being able to actually go. I would think about 99% of CNY fans couldn’t make it based on needing money, a place to stay, and the ability to go there.
I don't always buy this argument.
This may be the case [no cash] for a lot of people, but look at it this way:
Let’s say you refrain from spending $3 a day. That’s like a cup of coffee or two a day you’re buying at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks or whatever. A half-pack of smokes a day.
That $3 can be anything that you spend on a daily basis that you don’t really need.
The USC game is in 2012. That’s the earliest of the three games that’ll be played there.
If you sock away $3 a day, every day, from right now until September 1, 2012, you’ve saved about $3,285.
Let me write that again: $3,285. That’s just by adjusting your daily spending habits.
Let’s say the ticket is $50. Let’s say you get a hotel room in the city $400. Let’s also say it costs about $100 each way for gas and tolls. Entertainment and peripherals, well, let’s say you drop $500.
In all, that trip costs you $1,150. And that’s probably a high estimate. With the money you saved, you’re still $2,000 up. Fuck, you can now pay for your friend. Or, if you’re smart, split the costs.
For most people, I think that it’s not necessarily a question of “I can’t afford to go,” but rather “I don’t want to make the effort to go.”
And, in the end, if CNY had shown up at the Dome during the lean Robinson years, this wouldn’t have had to happen anyway.
I agree on most counts...
But if you think Gross has anything to do with the Lax team you’re crazy. Desko runs that program and no one else. I’m pretty sure Gross realizes he doesn’t need to do anything (and shouldn’t) to help the lax team. Women’s basketball and getting the Melo Center going are things he can definitely be given props for however.
Just booked 4 seats for 314 Row O at $15 a pop.
Good thing there’s no bad seats for football in the Dome.
Mmmm Gameday & Chucks. Makes my lips numb just thinking about it.
The 'Cuse is in tha house, oh my God oh my God.
No offense to the "olympic sports"
but if our football program stayed where it is now, I wouldn’t care if we came to stanford-esque prominence in those sports. The fact of the matter is that except for basketball and football, each sport cost the university hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in scholarships, equipment, maintenance, coaches, etc. Even lax probably loses alot of money, despite the fact that we are to college lax like Notre Dame is to football (or is Notre Dame football like the Syracuse of lacrosse?)
Anyway, I think Gross is putting the cart in front of the horse by devoting so much effort into the non-revenue sports. I love the idea of womens hockey, but that’s a huge financial burden on the school. If we had a football team that got to a bowl game every year, maybe even BCS once in a while or the 2d or 3d BE bowls, then adding non-revenue sports teams and improving non-football facilities would be appropriate.
To his credit tho, DOCTOR Gross inherited an athletic department that was still in the mid 80’s. So he made some changes that probably should have been made years ago. For example, the football weightroom, indoor football practice facility, Melo center, etc.
by Rocket Ship Science on Aug 31, 2009 9:18 AM EDT reply actions
You have to also consider
adding a sport such as women’s hockey will help your Title IX compliance. With the amount of football scholarships and the fact that you have to demonstrate progress toward a balance of scholarships between the genders, I think you’d find a lot of athletic departments adding a women’s team every few years over the past 20 years.
by SpotOnSpotwood on Aug 31, 2009 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions
Thats true,
but why add hockey? I mean the ice time, equipment and stuff is so expensive. I’d think women’s golf would be a better choice because they already own a course (Drumlins) and I bet all the athletes have their own clubs, so all they would have to spend is on spikes, balls, and polos. But then again I’m not running the show so this may not be true.
by Rocket Ship Science on Aug 31, 2009 11:44 AM EDT up reply actions
Syracuse is not the Notre Dame of Lacrosse. Syracuse is still great at lacrosse. Winning national titles>6-6 and mediocre bowl games.
There is no football team
to compare.
Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician - The Syracuse blog that cares.
by Sean Keeley on Aug 31, 2009 12:42 PM EDT up reply actions
There really isn't.
Not currently anyway. The best comparison for the ignorant masses I can think of (college-wise) is Wooden’s UCLA.
Ooops...
I meant men’s hockey. My point is still valid, but I just wanted to make it clear that I don’t “love” womens hockey. Its okay, i guess, but not much more.
by Rocket Ship Science on Aug 31, 2009 9:22 AM EDT reply actions
Starting Men's Hockey in Upstate NY from scratch would
be like trying to start baseball in Texas or Florida. Too much competition. Cornell, Clarkson, UB, Niagara, Colgate, RPI, & U of R would clean our clocks in recruiting, credibility, and overall performance. Oh yeah, and Boston, Northeastern, New Hampshire, Maine @ Orono ect. aren’t too far away either.
No chance. That’s why women’s is the right choice. If they have sustained success over a few years, maybe we try men’s.
For the record, I view Title IX as the stupidest thing ever invented. Ever. Worse than the SU snuggie. More people have probably bought SU Snuggies than gone to Olympic Sporting events.
The 'Cuse is in tha house, oh my God oh my God.
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