I saw a post earlier stating that the fans get too much blame. Which may be true. But if you look close, our fans have been below average that is for sure.
Las Vegas is the second best media market in the conference. Third if you want to count San Jose State. But they have such little market penetration and they are not a candidate for power conference expansion, that we will not include them.
Last year football finished first in the conference, made the MW championship for the first time ever, and made it to a bowl game with their best record since the 80's.
Our home attendance ranked 6th in the league last season.
Well we have been bad, and it took fans time to buy in. Sure. Well, there was excitement coming into this season. We go on the road and blowout a big 12 team. We get a ton of publicity, some votes in the polls, and became the favorite for the playoff spot in one game.
How do we follow that up with our home opener? One where we gave away 7200 tickets to students, 3/4 of those being freebies to anyone who wanted them ( not just students)
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Fresno is coming off a loss, where the score was more lopsided than than game to what could be a heavily flawed Michigan team. Playing a nobody school.
SDSU was bad last year, bringing a new coach. Has not looked good so far this year. But Oregon State is a good draw
Wyoming, a tiny market, got trounced by ASU, a middle to bottom PAC 12 team in recent years, though they may end up being pretty good this year. Playing a FCS team.
Then you look at basketball last season. we finished 4th in the conference standings, but 7th in attendance. Again one of the biggest markets in the conference.
Truth is our fans kinda suck. A lot of competition in Vegas, but it is a big market and UNLV offers sports at a huge discount compared to other schools.
The old fans are spoiled and will only show up for big games against name opponents in both sports. Or they are just apathetic and don't care enough to go. We think we deserve better than what we have shown because what Tark 30+ years ago. We are too good for our conference, yet haven't ever won it in major sports in 20 years now. Spoiled or apathetic, still both suck.
If Tark didn't have that success, we would likely have better fan support now because expectations would be more realistic. I know, I know. Tark built this university, and he did. Truth is, who knows where we would be today without him. But it is logical to believe that we would be in the MW at this point, just due to the fact that we are one of 2 state schools and are in a big market. Just the local population in itself would lend itself to having us in the conference by now. When the MW added SJSU, they sucked in both sports then.
This is important because the football team, the investment and the results, are getting us into expansion conversations. But regardless of our market size, we need more butts in seats and eyeballs on TV games for them to seriously consider us. As of now, we are not a good candidate, because all of the local college sports fans are watching different teams. Adding UNLV will not move the needle and is a poor investment.
We need money, but fans don't want to pay for tickets. We expect local businesses and hotels to sponsor the school or contribute to NIL, but why should they if they no there isn't much local interest. It doesn't make financial sense, and hotels are corporate owned now.
Bottom line, now is the time to try to get as many people as you know to go to games and watch on TV. Hopefully both. At least if you care at all about UNLV sports, which is the point of these boards.
More interest means more money for the school to pay to keep coaches, or gasp, buy the basketball coach that many want. It also may get local business attention which can also lead to more revenue and better coaches and players.
UNLV has made some terrible, terrible decisions. This is true. But fan support has been well below recent results.
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