The Hatchet has a piece today about athletic director Jack Kvancz being unconcerned about unsold season tickets - the $375 blue seats (plus $500 you have to pay to join the AD's Club in order to get the seats), which are the best seats in the house. He blames it on the economy, which seems pretty bogus to me - most of the bad economic news came out recently, and people have had a long time to renew their tickets.
To me, this problem comes down to two issues - crummy out-of-conference teams visiting the Smith Center, and a lack of publicity/hype about the team over the last few years. This was a team that was ranked #6 in the whole country, and now can't even sell its best season tickets. GW failed to capitalize on those great seasons of a few years ago, and they're reaping that now.
And really, who would pay $875 to see GW play such lowlights as Binghamton, Harvard, and UMBC? That, with American, are the only home non-conference games at the Smith Center this year. That's crummy. The A-10 schedule is ok, but that's going to be basically the same every year. I'll compare other A-10 teams' schedules soon -- in short, GW plays fewer home games than every other school in the A-10, aside from Temple (which plays two games at the Palestra).
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the schedule, stupid."
To me, this problem comes down to two issues - crummy out-of-conference teams visiting the Smith Center, and a lack of publicity/hype about the team over the last few years. This was a team that was ranked #6 in the whole country, and now can't even sell its best season tickets. GW failed to capitalize on those great seasons of a few years ago, and they're reaping that now.
And really, who would pay $875 to see GW play such lowlights as Binghamton, Harvard, and UMBC? That, with American, are the only home non-conference games at the Smith Center this year. That's crummy. The A-10 schedule is ok, but that's going to be basically the same every year. I'll compare other A-10 teams' schedules soon -- in short, GW plays fewer home games than every other school in the A-10, aside from Temple (which plays two games at the Palestra).
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the schedule, stupid."
Comments