Will packed houses ever return to Gallagher-Iba?
Published: 1/20/2010 9:14 AM
Last Modified: 1/20/2010 9:14 AM
Home basketball attendance continues to be an issue at Oklahoma State, which once took packed houses at Gallagher-Iba Arena for granted.
What have the attendance numbers been lately? It's hard to say. OSU used to list actual attendance and paid attendance on box scores. Now you can only find a paid attendance figure.
Second-year coach Travis Ford was asked attendance-related questions during a session with media this week.
"When I was studying to take this job one of the things I read a lot about was the significance of the home-court advantage here, the significance of Gallagher-Iba Arena and the rowdiness and one of the toughest home-court advantages in the country," Ford said. "I read a lot about that and we’ve had that on occasions. (It's) kind of like our basketball team. We’d just like to have more consistency.
Pick a theory -- any theory -- about why attendance sagged in recent seasons. Maybe fans jumped off the bandwagon because of three first-round NIT defeats. Maybe Sutton Family loyalists were looking for a reason to divorce themselves from the program. Maybe fans spent so much money on football tickets that they didn't have spare cash to spend on basketball, the sport that was OSU's cash cow when football didn't have a pulse. But paid attendance is still more than 10,000, which means that many fans who bought tickets and failed to show up are paying NOT to go to games.
"There are tickets to be gotten," Ford said. "Every game, there’s probably a 1,000 or 1,500 tickets on sale, but that’s all that’s left. We are successful at selling most of our tickets. That’s not the problem. We just have to get the people with the tickets to come watch the game and support this team. They did against Texas Tech and we thought it would start once the Big 12 Conference play got here. Hopefully (they) will continue to do that."
Know what solves attendance problems better than anything else? Winning. OSU started 3-6 in league play last season, then caught fire and played meaningful home games in February. And, at least temporarily, the roar was restored at GIA.
"The last three or four home games were terrific," Ford said.
For whatever reason, the carryover effect into this season was minimal. Some blame a lack of big-time opponents on the nonconference home schedule. But when has OSU ever played a nonconference home schedule that featured "name" opponents? Hardly ever.
The loudest crowd of the season thus far showed up for a Big 12 opener against Texas Tech. "I'd take that night in and night out," Ford said. "It was terrific."
Because virtually every arena in the Big 12 has become a snakepit for visiting teams, Ford wants GIA to be rocking "just for the reason that we need every advantage we can get.... Hopefully our fans will come out and support us. "
--By Jimmie Tramel.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
