Originally posted by CougPatrol:
I've been attending games since the early 1980's, and I haven't seen much variance over the past 30+ years. When we win, we draw 33K fans. When we suck, we draw 25K fans. Our season ticket numbers have fluctuated to some degree, but not all that much.
dgibbons brings up a good point about how all games are on TV now, which no doubt keeps some fans home. On the other hand, the University has grown and we now have branch campuses thoughout the State, so we've probably picked up a few fans over the years.
All told, we have a core group of approximately 20K fans who attend home games. Since our program has never experienced consistent winning, it's hard to forecast how we would do if we strung together a decade of decent, 6+ seasons, but it would obviously help.
The real killer is that we've had some REALLY bad stretches of play over the past 2 decades. There's bad and then there's Cougar bad. I'm not talking about slight downturns, but rather stretches of several seasons where we're among the worst programs in the Nation. Price followed up the Rose Bowl in 1997 with 3 conference wins in 3 seasons, and consecutive losses to Idaho. Then Wulff drove the program into the abyss. The Leach hire breathed life into the program, and I still think he'll turn us around, but just when fans start to believe, we take a couple of steps back. In 2012, we lost a bunch (as was expected), but then pulled off a great Apple Cup win. 2013 was a rollercoaster season. We'd show promise, then be a no show. We earned a minor bowl birth, and proceeded to choke the bowl game away in epic Cougar fashion. 2014 began with us allowing an 80 yard TD pass on the first play from scrimmage, and we never recovered.
Our fans are justifiably jaded. We need to give them something to get excited about. It's been a long, dark road.