Online Publication Expects USA Football Attendance to “go down over the course of the season”
One online publication wrote that South Alabama’s attendance increase this season has been skewed by the “hordes of Mississippi State fans” who attended the Jaguars first home game this season for a sell-out record crowd of 38,129. They then pointed to the 11,348 for the following game against Georgia Southern and expects the USA’s attendance increase statistic to dwindle down the rest of the season.
Residents will tell you that Mobile has traditionally been a fairweather sports town. Unless your cry is “roll tide”, “war eagle” or involves high school football, Mobilians tend to only show up when you are winning and/or playing the “big dogs” as they would say. But South Alabama is working hard to build their fan base and change that mentality a little bit.
Many use the excuse that the location where Ladd-Peebles Stadium is located and the condition of the stadium as two major reasons why they do not attend games. Many hardcore fans realize that if it wasn’t for the city of Mobile having Ladd-Peebles Stadium it would have been exponentially more difficult to have started football a mere six years ago.
Having an underutilized 38,000 seat stadium in your back yard is an envious problem to have, many would say.
Many of those same fans who use the excuse of the stadium and location criticize the University for not building an on-campus stadium. But former Sun Belt Member Florida Atlantic, who started football in 2001, finally built an on-campus stadium that seats 29,419 in 2011 at the cost of $70 million. Director of Athletics Joel Erdmann is asked about an on-campus stadium on a regular basis and one of his standard answer is along the lines of “if you give us the money, we will build it.”
Is this how we want to be known?
Do we want to be known as the fairweather town where good things quickly blossom but fades due to neglect? (Not that I think South Alabama football will fade, it is college football deep in the heart of probably the nation’s most avid fanbase.)
Promised attendance will not get the stadium built any sooner. The only thing that will get a stadium built sooner rather than later will be strong attendance. And money, money will definitely get it built sooner.
If you have several million dollars laying around waiting to be put to good use, I can put you in touch with Dr. Erdmann in a heartbeat. He will probably put your name on the stadium too.