We really haven't seen a sold out game in William R. Johnson since the Cram The Coliseum game against Sam Houston in which we had 3 rows of standing room only surrounding the atrium.
We've had close to sold out games but there is always a few empty seats.
So will we finally get another sold out game this season with us having one of the, if not the, best start in SFA history?
Will we sell out part one of the BOTPW of basketball on Janurary 27th?
What do we need to do to get our apathetic student body to fill that place on a more consistent basis outside of obviously changing conferences?

I have never been to a sold out game where the students made up more than 10-15% of the patrons. Community involvement is what sells out games. They are almost always well publicized games that have some inducements and/or free tickets. The only game I remember selling out that wasn't a free ticket game off hand was the early morning UNI game. However, they bussed in schools for it too. Cram the coliseum will "sell" out, but that's it. The best I see happening is getting close to 5k attendance per game.

INiedrauer said:

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I don't buy blaming the students. I wish there were more of them but they're the best fans in that building. The town is where the apathy mostly resides.

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Having been to games at UT, A&M, Sam Houston, NW St, Centenary, U of H etc. you get the point, quite a few places. We truly have one of the best home court advantages in mid major basketball. Probably better than 60% of majors. We just don't get those crowds for Incarnate Word or Nicholls. If it's someone decent (Sam, A&M Corpus, NWST) the crowds are good.

INiedrauer said:

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I don't buy blaming the students. I wish there were more of them but they're the best fans in that building. The town is where the apathy mostly resides.

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How is our advertising in town for gamedays to try to get people to show up? Between Nac & Lufkin & 13k students, you ought to be able to get 4-5k a night.

You have two groups from the community: 1) those that support the university and 2) those who hate the university.

During my time there I worked at a local restaurant and had several people tell me they were glad when summer came so all the damn college kids would leave. Apparently they thought I was a local. I even talked to a couple at a casino in the last week who was from Nac and told them I went to SFA and they gave me the stink eye and made a comment about the students. I'm not really sure why so many locals hate and don't support the university.

If you look at those locals that do come to the games and other university events it's akways the same ones.

Not sure if maybe the teams or university need to do some community outreach to get more locals to come. Hell there are several schools around the area they could be attracting kids to come to games.

As far as students that has been the question since I was there. Hell the team could win a national championship and I doubt the games the following year would be sold out.

We have the best team and fans in the conference. The cream will rise to the top. We are about to get on a major roll!

Isaac, I was just thinking the same thing. Nac would be a ghost town without the college. Nothing downtown, no new restaurants, no growth. It'd be a depressing place.

Nac & SFA have a highly symbiotic relationship.

Full disclosure: I did attend 2 years at SFA before transferring away to finish at a private school in Chicago. Everyone in my family including my wife, my boss, and my best friend have graduated from SFA.

I'll give a local perspective. As someone that has been involved in city events and fundraising for Nacogdoches, there has been a disconnect between the city and the college for quite a while. There are many people that work to try to maximize the college's involvement in the community, but on a whole the perspective from non-university locals is that SFA does not invest in the city. The city feels like they have to kowtow to the college when it comes to trying to get their events or historical projects press. They feel like they are constantly working to get SFA to help endorse local projects while they are ALWAYS promoting SFA events.

Whether there is truth behind it, the overwhelming feeling is that SFA will not spend a dime on investing in local non-university matters. As if, it is of no benefit to the university to see the town flourish. There is the general feeling that SFA is run by an insular elite that won't sully themselves in the proletariate of Nacogdoches. If you are a local, take some time to notice how many businesses promote SFA and then try to notice how often you see SFA take part in local events. I'm not offering judgment, just trying to present the other side.

Obviously, many SFA employees are locals that have a great impact in the community. Most outreach happens at an individual level, and this is a wonderful thing. There are many professors that are engaged in the local political and historical system. For the most part, locals have always been very supportive of the sports system that SFA has. Like I've said before 80+% of attendance for every event is from the community.

There needs to be more interplay between the college and the community. That's how you're going to get sold out games. Until then, we'll have to settle for the best fans in the SLC.

Very interesting posts from 05 and Ryan on the Nac and SFA relationship. This would make a good thread for a general discussion column along with why Nacogdoches does not seem interested in local growth as well.

As for this thread, my first year at SFA in 76, I lived in dorm 14 and could never get anyone to go to basketball games with me. Now back then we were NAIA and mostly played other "small" schools. Now with a Div ! banner and several NCAA appearances one would expect more student interest......that said not all students care about sports and many other students who follow sports still consider their Power 5 favorite to be their team.

As for community involvement, I have seen pics on facebook of TJ visiting kids at a local elementary school. I believe that is the place to start to try and make Nac and SFA more of a team, work the kids during the school year with students and athletes from SFA but keep it an ongoing thing each year. Show interest in the youngsters and when they become adult locals then perhaps you have more local support. A sincere effort on the part of the university to do this would build more local support down the line. Certainly wouldn't erase all issues but would be a smart start.

Here's a nice article about SFA and the community coming together. Glory Gang is a great organization that helps many young kids across Nacogdoches.

http://sfajacks.com/news/2017/12/30/mens-basketball-jacks-host-nacogdoches-glory-gang-for-afternoon-of-basketball-fun.aspx

nacluth said:

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Here's a nice article about SFA and the community coming together. Glory Gang is a great organization that helps many young kids across Nacogdoches.

http://sfajacks.com/news/2017/12/30/mens-basketball-jacks-host-nacogdoches-glory-gang-for-afternoon-of-basketball-fun.aspx

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I was just about to bring up how Keller has made a very obvious effort to make an impact on our community. I could see him wanting to stay around for a while just because eventually he is going to be universally loved here for a lot bigger reasons than basketball.

I lived in Nac for six years and would love to move back and live there for the rest of my life if everything works out. But Lufkin is much better set up to be a college town in my opinion. One reason residents hate students is because the roads and restaurant/stores get packed. There's nothing we can really do to change that.

nacluth said:

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Whether there is truth behind it, the overwhelming feeling is that SFA will not spend a dime on investing in local non-university matters. As if, it is of no benefit to the university to see the town flourish. There is the general feeling that SFA is run by an insular elite that won't sully themselves in the proletariate of Nacogdoches. If you are a local, take some time to notice how many businesses promote SFA and then try to notice how often you see SFA take part in local events. I'm not offering judgment, just trying to present the other side.

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Love the perspective here, glad to hear a local opinion. Just points to the fact that we need new university leadership, because the school & the town are in a mutually beneficial relationship & growth in 1 can help growth in the other. For a rural college, to grow we'll need a concerted effort from all stakeholders.

INiedrauer said:

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I don't buy blaming the students. I wish there were more of them but they're the best fans in that building. The town is where the apathy mostly resides.

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Sorry, I'm not on Twitter, but I did see this posted looking around.

I'm going to throw out my estimates (they could be wildly inaccurate so challenge them). I see about 300-400 students at the games each time I attend. There could be up to double that some nights- though that might be a stretch. 400 out of 12,000 students, let's call it 3.5% of the student population (they get in free). There's usually about 3,000 attendees from the city out of 30,000 (about 10% who have to pay). Apathy from the town? I don't buy it. I think 10% attendance from any town in any college town is pretty decent. If we had 10% from the student population each night, it would be a fearsome arena even without sellouts. Just my opinion. I think we can get 15% from both, and then it is what you want, but apathy is not from the town's side.

Some help in busting my estimates (which I tried not to include faculty/staff which attend in a higher percentage).:

30,000 is a slightly low figure for the city but close; the county on a whole is 60,000+. 12,000 registered students may be artificially high since it's not based on near campus students.

I said free for students because they already paid with their tuition. Not attending is just not claiming something that they have been charged for in fees.

I wrote up this long winded reply only to press the wrong button and have it disappear.

Let me just say that the complaints from citizens about the university and the university about the citizens has been going on as long as I can remember and I'm 55. I don't think it is unique to Nac and SFA nor do I think most of it should be taken very seriously, as long as the leadership of the two organizations work together on mutually beneficial projects.

As far as attendance at basketball games from residents, don't forget that Nac is football country and Nac is also depressed economically and has been for at least 50 years.

Go to the US Census Bureau and compare Nacogdoches to a couple of surrounding towns and look at the Income & Poverty numbers

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/hendersoncitytexas,longviewcitytexas,lufkincitytexas,nacogdochescitytexas,tylercitytexas,houstoncitytexas/PST045216

Nacogdoches is the lowest among those I picked. Some of these numbers are skewed by college students that are being counted as residents but likewise they are also skewed by higher PhD salaries. We discussed this in one of my college classes back in the early '80s and it is still true.

Outside of physicians and professors, most people in Nac do not make that much money and must spend their entertainment dollars carefully.

So let's just get good at football. Join an FBS conference. Obviously not a power 5. That's just crazy. Have 3 or 4 undefeated or close to undefeated runs in that conference. Get an invite to a power 5. Finish in the top 5 in that conference for a couple of seasons. Then have an undefeated season. Beat Oklahoma in the CFB playoffs like everyone else does, and win the National championship over Alabama.
Then maybe we can start talking about decent attendance in our sports.