Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
The Dinos (especially in terms of football) have small crowds for a number of reason. One important reason is because of the nature of the UofC. The UofC is largely a commuter university which serves students from the immediate area. As such, campus life has always been fairly tame compared to other Universities. Students commute to the school, do their classes and commute home. There are ~30,000 student at the UofC and only about 3,000 live on residence. I was a commuter student and coming back up to the UofC/McMahon on a Saturday for a Dinos game had little to no priority. Another important factor is that the alumni community really doesn't care that much about the school post graduation. For a vast majority of the students a bond or connection just isn't established while studying there and that leads to poor alumni relations with the school.
Speaking of Dinos, if a joint facility is built in the downtown area I wonder if the Dinos will play there as well. I would assume they would stay at McMahon otherwise the UofC would have to sign some sort of new usage agreement with the facility owners.
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The venue itself is a huge factor as well. People who live on campus don't care to go to the game since the atmosphere for the game isn't that great since it's such a small turnout for a greatly over excessive seating capacity. The Stamps moving downtown leaving McMahon obsolete could actually be a benefit for the university administration as they would be tempted to construct a new football stadium on a much, much smaller scale, and more suitable for a CIS crowd.
The atmosphere for the games would be better since the impression of the games being massively under attended wouldn't be as prevalent with a +5,000 seating capacity stadium compared with a 33,000 capacity stadium. The crowd interaction would be more intimate, and have more of a fun/party attribute to it which appeals to the student demographic. People would be more inclined to go to games if a lot of others are going; especially if you could average ~50% turnout at the start, which could lead to attendance growing overtime.