From mid-summer through the end of the calendar year, college football dominates NCAA sports discussions, and just when it is concluding, the second juggernaut of the athletic/academic year appears in the form of men’s basketball. At its most intense, with both overlapping just after the New Year celebrations are winding down, these two totally drown-out much of the attention for lower-profile college sports.
As a result of this myopic focus, athletic departments give disproportionate budgets to football and basketball, resulting in the rich getting richer, while the “little guys” on campus must develop interest in unique and creative ways. While one can argue that the allocation of funds is correlated with the attention and revenue these two major college sports draw, perhaps it is more an issue of chicken versus egg. Do football and basketball get more attention because they receive more funding (and thus can have flashier uniforms, bigger in-game productions, better facilities, etc.), or do they have more funding because they get more attention?
Either way, thousands of hard-working student athletes toil throughout the year under the shadow of “the big two,” never sniffing the rarefied air of national media prominence. To combat this, teams from a number of different sports are turning to creatively using different venues to garner attention and fan attendance. Perhaps taking a cue from the NHL’s Winter Classic (which in 2014 set the NHL attendance record), athletic departments are seeking to build excitement around their many other programs by utilizing alternative settings.
Keeping with hockey, a prime example of this growing trend was Saturday night’s game at Madison Square Garden between Quinnipiac and Harvard. While hockey has been a mainstay at “the world’s most famous arena,” it is only in recent years that the college game has made a splash during the regular season. Having sold-out the venue several times for games between Cornell and Boston University, this year’s iteration is once again bringing attention to participating schools. Quinnipiac, coming to presence on a national hockey stage, will reap the benefits of playing at MSG both in reputation and revenue. The school is reporting ticket sales of 10,000+ for the MSG tilt, a substantial uptick over the normal mid-regular-season attendance.
While hockey seems to be setting the pace in this growing trend, other programs are following with their own variations on the alternative-venue theme. As discussed briefly here a few months ago, Iowa and Oklahoma State shattered the NCAA record for attendance at a wrestling dual meet when they hosted the Grapple on the Gridiron. Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, usually used by the football team, was converted into a 40,000+ seat open-air wrestling arena. The event nearly tripled the previous attendance record of about 15,000 and thrust an exciting match between two storied programs into the national spotlight.
Obviously, using alternative venues to create buzz is not limited to lower-profile sports, as basketball has been getting-in on the act for years. The Carrier Classic, for example, pitted UNC against Michigan State on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson way back in 2011. It seems, however, that despite years of execution, alternative arenas are still trying to get it right; this recent report about San Diego’s Petco Park hosting a college basketball game sounds pretty miserable.
It is hard to determine how much longer seeing a competition in alternative and non-traditional venues will excite fans. It seems for many programs, however, there is a great deal of opportunity still available to generate interest in a sport that perhaps falls by the wayside during college football and basketball seasons. While execution of an off-site, alternative venue event is challenging and time-consuming, attendance records are being broken, and fans seem more than willing to enjoy the familiar in an unfamiliar setting.
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