Grandpa
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Post by Grandpa on Oct 1, 2004 16:34:19 GMT -5
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 10:26:58 GMT -5
any word on which games will be on tv (if any )? last year in a similar type article on guhoyas.com they had that information.
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 10:28:37 GMT -5
i don't like seeing many 12pm start times. less kids usually go because they have to wake up pretty early (well, for a college student on a saturday morning) to make it all the way to chinatown.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 10:40:27 GMT -5
Yeah, that could definitely be a problem for the citadel and norfolk state games but I think people will make it out for the Notre Dame game. As for the Villanova game, I think it all depends on our record by that point in the season. If we have a pretty good record the start time will still hurt us but we'll be ok since it's a Big East game.
However, I do agree that 12 o'clock games are absolute BS if we are trying to increase attendance. Yeah, people will complain that there is no reason students shouldnt be able to get to the MCI Center by 12, but the fact of the matter is a lot just won't.
Look at it this way, the hardcore fans will definitely be there just because they try to make it to all of the games, but those in between fans that we are trying to market to will be much less likely to go if they have to wake up early (and it is early when you are out drinking till 4 am), and get to the MCI Center before noon.
In my opinion there should be no start times before 2pm, and I dont buy this BS that it's the only available time. With the amount of money that we are paying to that place they should be able to accomodate us. There is no way we can have a true home court advantage with crap like this taking place.
Rant over, haha.
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 12:25:56 GMT -5
Haha, nice rant. I mean, if the game were on campus, 12pm wouldn't be that bad, but the fact that we have to make it all the way to MCI makes more like a 11:30am starting time for us. 2pm is a much better start time for an afternoon game, especially on a friggen sunday, where people will be waking up at halftime after partying all night.
The athletic department should at least think about this stuff when scheduling games, but it doesn't seem like this is even on their list.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 12:47:32 GMT -5
Yeah, its ridiculous, this kind of stuff absolutely kills student attendance. I would also say that its even worse than an 11:30 am on campus start. The last student bus for the MCI Center will leave around 11:30 and then people will have to find their own way to the game.
For an on campus game people would at least be able to come in a few minutes late, but at MCI the people that come in late end up coming in at halftime. This is a serious problem and its really disturbing that the athletic department isnt thinking about this kind of stuff.
Hoya Blue is going to try and get a late bus going this year but this kind of scheduling is a major problem.
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Post by ColumbiaHeightsHoya on Oct 3, 2004 15:28:33 GMT -5
I agree with you all, but come on! ALL THE WAY DOWN TO CHINATOWN? We used to have to go to landover and without cars it was very difficult. You can take a five minute cab ride to chinatown. I sympathize with the college student who has to wake up to go to these games but lets not forget about the not so distant past which was the Cap Center! I used to walk back to campus from the old 9:30 club (no longer a building and across from platinum/home for those who don't recall) when I ran out of money due to that last minute decision as to whether to get one more beer at the show or a cab home. Beer frequently won out.
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Joe Hoya
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Post by Joe Hoya on Oct 3, 2004 15:41:32 GMT -5
You guys can't have it both ways. Either we change the starting times or we get on TV (which we won't this season anyway, but nevermind that).
The later time slots (such as 2 PM) are generally where top-flight matchups are scheduled for TV purposes. If we play at 12, we have a chance at getting on TV should we have early-season success. Again, I don't forsee that, but it's still something to consider.
12 PM is not too early. If you're too hungover to make a concerted effort to wake up and go get on a bus by 11:30, then I don't really want you, anyway. But that's probably just me.
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 16:23:31 GMT -5
I can see both the points about the Landover days and about 12pm being fine. But in both cases, I think we need to reach out to the casual fan. I'll be at the MCI Center before tip off at a 12pm game no matter how hung over I am. The hardcore fans are gonna be there no matter what. However, the casual fan that we NEED to be there for us to have a home court advantage will be less inclined to go, and our student section will look as miserable as it looked for the 12pm Syracuse game last year.
Student culture has changed (plus we're also very lazy), and people aren't as willing to make commitments to Hoya basketball as they once were. But we need to reach out to people and have as much of a home court advantage as we possibly can at MCI.
Last point: I know that MCI is MILES closer than Landover was, but it's still a hike. It took about 15 minutes at best to get a cab there at about 11am on Saturday for the Duke game. For weeknight games, traffic can make it take half an hour. So while it's a huge improvement from the Cap Centre, it's still a big commitment from us students, timewise and moneywise.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 16:38:11 GMT -5
I agree with you all, but come on! ALL THE WAY DOWN TO CHINATOWN? We used to have to go to landover and without cars it was very difficult. You can take a five minute cab ride to chinatown. I sympathize with the college student who has to wake up to go to these games but lets not forget about the not so distant past which was the Cap Center! I used to walk back to campus from the old 9:30 club (no longer a building and across from platinum/home for those who don't recall) when I ran out of money due to that last minute decision as to whether to get one more beer at the show or a cab home. Beer frequently won out. I am going to echo basically what CAHoya07 said. While we all know that this is much better than the situation was with the Cap Center, that doesn't mean the situation is always so easy to deal with. Of course, we can't even try to compare getting to Chinatown with getting to Landover, there is no comparison. However, you also have to rememeber that the team is not nearly as good as it was when the team played in Landover. People were willing to put all that time and effort into making the trek over to the Cap Center because they were usually going to cheer on a top 25 team and the student body was really into it. Nowadays the team is struggling just to keep its head over water and the casual student fan just isnt going to invest a ton of time and effort into going and watching an average at best team. In addition, while getting to MCI is much easier than getting to Cap Center must have been, there can still be many hassles and it can take quite a while to get to and from games on certain nights. And considering the amount of Georgetown students who just sit around and do homework on week nights its very difficult to convince them to get to the MCI Center and put their homework off till later.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 3, 2004 16:49:24 GMT -5
You guys can't have it both ways. Either we change the starting times or we get on TV (which we won't this season anyway, but nevermind that). The later time slots (such as 2 PM) are generally where top-flight matchups are scheduled for TV purposes. If we play at 12, we have a chance at getting on TV should we have early-season success. Again, I don't forsee that, but it's still something to consider. 12 PM is not too early. If you're too hungover to make a concerted effort to wake up and go get on a bus by 11:30, then I don't really want you, anyway. But that's probably just me. Joe, I agree that we should probably have a game or at most two games at 12 in order to try and get on TV as the early game. However, lets be realistic here, there is no way on earth that a game against the citadel or norfolk state is ever going to find itself on tv, at least not any real network. There is no excuse for scheduling crappy teams that early. As if it isnt hard enough to get students out to a game against the citadel or norfolk state, they schedule at a time that a lot of students dont even normally wake up by on a weekend. If we want to try and get on tv as the early game then fine, schdule notre dame and uconn at 12, but not the citadel, norfolk state, or even villanova this year. As for the part about not wanting students who cant make a concerted effort to get on a bus by 11:30, I would agree with you if this was the ideal student fan environment. Trust me, I wish I could just say that I didnt want them because that is how I would normally feel. However, our student section is just way too weak and student attendance will continue to plummet if we just ignore those fans. We need to do everything we can to try and get those "tweener" fans out there. The die hards will be there, but there just aren't enough to fill out the student section and the people with no interest whatsoever wont be there, but we need everyone in between to be at the games and help create a true home court advantage.
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Post by FromTheBeginning on Oct 3, 2004 17:23:42 GMT -5
I think the 12:00 start times have something to do with MCI Center having something booked in the evening. Maybe the hockey lockout will allow them to change some start times when it becomes clear some of those dates may be open.
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FLHoya
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Post by FLHoya on Oct 4, 2004 0:49:31 GMT -5
Joe, I agree that we should probably have a game or at most two games at 12 in order to try and get on TV as the early game. However, lets be realistic here, there is no way on earth that a game against the citadel or norfolk state is ever going to find itself on tv, at least not any real network. There is no excuse for scheduling crappy teams that early. As if it isnt hard enough to get students out to a game against the citadel or norfolk state, they schedule at a time that a lot of students dont even normally wake up by on a weekend. If we want to try and get on tv as the early game then fine, schdule notre dame and uconn at 12, but not the citadel, norfolk state, or even villanova this year. As for the part about not wanting students who cant make a concerted effort to get on a bus by 11:30, I would agree with you if this was the ideal student fan environment. Trust me, I wish I could just say that I didnt want them because that is how I would normally feel. However, our student section is just way too weak and student attendance will continue to plummet if we just ignore those fans. We need to do everything we can to try and get those "tweener" fans out there. The die hards will be there, but there just aren't enough to fill out the student section and the people with no interest whatsoever wont be there, but we need everyone in between to be at the games and help create a true home court advantage. 007, clearly something is up with you, at the end there you were starting to sound WAY too much like one of my columns! I wish I had more to add on the notion of scheduling times to try and get on television, but I can't say precisely how ESPN, CBS, and ABC schedule their games. I know at least last year, 2:00pm on Saturday seemed to be the money hour for CBS big-ticket games. ABC (perhaps b/c they did Pac-10 a lot) seemed to have something going at the 4:00pm area if I recall. ESPN is a mixed bunch on the weekend--you see a lot of A-10 games in the 12:00pm slots, but anything goes, I mean our Temple and Syracuse games were weekend afternoon ESPN games. But Saturday noon doesn't seem like a sexy TV slot. We've played otherwise interesting games on Sat. at noon that weren't picked up nationally--the 4OT game against Notre Dame being an example that you could've only seen on ESPN+ (wonder how ESPN or CBS would have handled a 4OT game with a 2:00pm game behind it?) During the week, you're tied to the conference-by-day system on ESPN--the Big Monday, Super Tuesday, etc. thing. And we know that last year the Big East started cherry picking crossover opponents to sex up the TV appeal. Ultimately, then, I think it comes down to winning more unfortunately. We can move games to whenever we want, but seems that the TV people are going with what gets viewers, and that isn't us at the moment. As for trying to get kids to the Citadel and Norfolk State games, good luck for a different reason. One is the day after Thanksgiving, the other is December 28th. If you're still on campus then, I think you'll be very lonely.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 1:22:27 GMT -5
Haha, didn't even think about checking the exact dates, those will definitely limit the amount of students at the games to say the least. I still don't like those 12 o'clock start times though.
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Diablo
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Post by Diablo on Oct 4, 2004 11:12:41 GMT -5
We also play UCONN at home before students arrive on campus for the start of the spring semester. That won't help attendance.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 11:16:30 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm assuming that they wont even give out Uconn tickets with the student season ticket package (they will probably be crossed out) and they wont even have a student section. It's really freaking annoying that they have a game like this during break because this would obviously be a huge draw and instead its being wasted in terms of student attendance.
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 13:31:49 GMT -5
I talked about the UConn earlier in a previous thread. It's freakin ridiculous. Since we're not playing a Syracuse or Duke at home this year, I had the feeling this would be the home game of the year for us, them being the defending national champs and all. But no, the game is during winter break. I'm debating flying back early for this game (although I would need a place to stay), but it won't have the same kind of atmosphere. The whole situation blows. Hoya Blue or someone should set something up for people who still want to go (and I'm sure there are plenty), I dunno, some kind of get-together/pregame to counteract this.
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 13:35:22 GMT -5
We are playing someone equivalent to a syracuse or duke at home other than uconn. We play illinois at home on December 9th, that is a huge game and we better be able to get a ton of people there.
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 13:36:04 GMT -5
Another gripe: why the HELL is the Syracuse game at the Dome, a typical rivalry game for both of us, scheduled for January 18th, a freakin TUESDAY!? It's bad enough that we don't have em at home this year, but I thought at least we'd be able to road trip it to 'Cuse for that game. Tuesday night game renders this practically impossible.
%*@# YOU, SCHEDULE MAKERS!!!
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CAHoya07
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Post by CAHoya07 on Oct 4, 2004 13:38:16 GMT -5
Understood, GU07, Illinois game is a definite plus. It's early in the season, but we definitely need a ton of people to come out for that one and be loud as hell.
Thursday night too at 7:30. I'll be plenty trashed for that one. ;D
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