FB: American Rivers Conference

[dutchfan1]

I think SC hit it on the head with that -- stadium size is going to make all the difference. 5000 fans at Schipper stadium fills the place up, but it makes the Drake stadium look empty. 50,000 fans at ISU looks pretty good, while 50,000 fans in Kinnick makes the place look and feel bare. Comparing ISU to Iowa to UNI to Drake is really comparing apples to oranges.

[doolittledog]

I have a different take on the Drake vs. IIAC. Before I say this, please remember I love the IIAC conference, played at SC for four years and attend multiple SC games in a given year. I can speak to watching both Drake and Simpson in the same year. And before I hear the argument - "well, Simpson has been down the past few years" - I watched Simpson hang with a very talented Central team last year and watched Drake play within a few weeks of that. If you have attended a Drake game in the past few years, I have a hard time believing you would think they would go less in 9-1, 8-2 in the IIAC almost every year. Are they a glorified DIII team, probably so. But I think you can really see a difference in the speed of play.

In the past four years, Drake is 11-0 versus NCAA II, III and NAIA teams and they are 1-8 versus I-AA scholarship teams. Of course, 4 of those losses are to UNI.

As for the "no one attending the Drake games," it's all relative. You have to rememeber that Drake Stadium seats over 14,000, so it's going to look somewhat empty. If I remember correctly, Drake averages 4-5,000 at their home games. That's on par with Wartburg and Central, right?

If you're going to mention the 4 losses to UNI you should probably mention how many of those 11 wins are against Upper Iowa and Waldorf 

And I see your point about Drake.  I don't think Walston was saying Drake would be a bad team in the IIAC.  He compared Drake to Coe, which has 3 IIAC titles in the last 6 seasons and while not winning the title in the last 2 seasons has gone 7-3 each year!!!

[sportsknight]

Some of my SA buddies played for Drake, and they always complained about the attendance being limited to moms and girlfriends.

Maybe they should start recruiting more Mormons. 

[Pat Coleman]

Central would beat Drake 9.9 times out of 10.

I'm still fairly OK with this statement.

[Walston Hoover]

Over 6 games, Drake averaged 4293 per game.
Wartburg had 4476
Central had a paltry 1925 per game in a conf championship season. Not exactly something I would call great fan support.
Others-
BV-2780
Coe-3271
Cornell-800
UD-1901
Loras-1246
Luther-2999
Simpson-2300

One other factor to consider, aside from parents and girlfriends, schools probably draw their largest support from alums. I'm not sure exactly how large Drake is, but I think its somewhere around 5000, which doesn't seem that large, except that is is twice as large as any IIAC school but Luther. They should have a lot more in attendance than any IIAC school.
ALso-10,216 showed up to watch Drake against UNI. That helps those attendance numbers quite a bit.

10 of 11 of Drake's wins are against Waldorf, UIU, or UW-Platteville. The 11th is against Billy Penn

[doolittledog]

Over 6 games, Drake averaged 4293 per game.
Wartburg had 4476
Central had a paltry 1925 per game in a conf championship season. Not exactly something I would call great fan support.
Others-
BV-2780
Coe-3271
Cornell-800
UD-1901
Loras-1246
Luther-2999
Simpson-2300

One other factor to consider, aside from parents and girlfriends, schools probably draw their largest support from alums. I'm not sure exactly how large Drake is, but I think its somewhere around 5000, which doesn't seem that large, except that is is twice as large as any IIAC school but Luther. They should have a lot more in attendance than any IIAC school.
ALso-10,216 showed up to watch Drake against UNI. That helps those attendance numbers quite a bit.

10 of 11 of Drake's wins are against Waldorf, UIU, or UW-Platteville. The 11th is against Billy Penn

A few theories...

1. Winning is getting boring for Central fans
2. Central cheerleaders aren't as good looking as they used to be!!!
3. Massive consumption of Dutch Letters has caused waist lines to expand...causing a spreading out of the fanbase...and therefore fewers bodies in the stands, while still filling up the stands!!!
4. Central fanbase isn't all it's been made out to be!!!
5. Central SID actually makes an accurate count of bodies in stadium as opposed to making up a number!!!

[wartknight]

This is what I have so far.  I'm not sure about a couple of spellings since they came from "secondary sources" ... If your name is missing, let me know on here.

IIAC FAN BASE
UD:  doolittledog, DBQ1965, Spurrier, WillieU, Keith45

Central:  dutchFan2004, Dutchfan1, Klompen, KCDutch, Dutchlb, oldbeake, Airborne Dutch

Wartburg:  Walston Hoover, sportsknight, Wartburg Fan, footballdaddy, TheOne89.1

Luther:  Ram2

BV:  The Show, Klopenheimer, BeaverOfYore

Coe:  Charlie Kohawk, coocooforcokohawks, Kohawk Krazy, the_mayne_event, Kohawk Remedy

Cornell:  Purple Hayes, Ash Park

Loras:

Simpson:  Storm-what?, sc-stormchaser, New Storm

Wartknight for the warts

[sc_stormchaser]

WH- you're roughly 1500 students off the Drake numbers. They like to say they have 5500 students, but that includes graduate, doctoral and law students. Actually, they usually have about 800 students in an entering class, although last year it was over 900. You probably won't see many of the graduate and law students attending games, unless they went to Drake for undergraduate. But to your point, they're still double that of most IIAC schools.

I still want to hear from someone who has actually attend both a Drake and IIAC game in the past few year. I would like to hear what you think? We can talk all the numbers that we want...I've seen both and I believe we're crazy to think Wartburg and Central would win 7 or 8 out of 10. From my observations, I think we would be lucky to go .500.

[the_mayne_event]

Over 6 games, Drake averaged 4293 per game.
Wartburg had 4476
Central had a paltry 1925 per game in a conf championship season. Not exactly something I would call great fan support.
Others-
BV-2780
Coe-3271
Cornell-800
UD-1901
Loras-1246
Luther-2999
Simpson-2300

One other factor to consider, aside from parents and girlfriends, schools probably draw their largest support from alums. I'm not sure exactly how large Drake is, but I think its somewhere around 5000, which doesn't seem that large, except that is is twice as large as any IIAC school but Luther. They should have a lot more in attendance than any IIAC school.
ALso-10,216 showed up to watch Drake against UNI. That helps those attendance numbers quite a bit.

10 of 11 of Drake's wins are against Waldorf, UIU, or UW-Platteville. The 11th is against Billy Penn

A few theories...

1. Winning is getting boring for Central fans
2. Central cheerleaders aren't as good looking as they used to be!!!
3. Massive consumption of Dutch Letters has caused waist lines to expand...causing a spreading out of the fanbase...and therefore fewers bodies in the stands, while still filling up the stands!!!
4. Central fanbase isn't all it's been made out to be!!!
5. Central SID actually makes an accurate count of bodies in stadium as opposed to making up a number!!!

winning doesnt ever get old.
out of those theories i would say 4.  5 doesnt necessarly hold water, the amount of tickets bought should dictate the number of bodies in the stands.  students are harder, because they get in for free.

[dutchfan1]

Over 6 games, Drake averaged 4293 per game.
Wartburg had 4476
Central had a paltry 1925 per game in a conf championship season. Not exactly something I would call great fan support.
Others-
BV-2780
Coe-3271
Cornell-800
UD-1901
Loras-1246
Luther-2999
Simpson-2300

One other factor to consider, aside from parents and girlfriends, schools probably draw their largest support from alums. I'm not sure exactly how large Drake is, but I think its somewhere around 5000, which doesn't seem that large, except that is is twice as large as any IIAC school but Luther. They should have a lot more in attendance than any IIAC school.
ALso-10,216 showed up to watch Drake against UNI. That helps those attendance numbers quite a bit.

10 of 11 of Drake's wins are against Waldorf, UIU, or UW-Platteville. The 11th is against Billy Penn

A few theories...

1. Winning is getting boring for Central fans
2. Central cheerleaders aren't as good looking as they used to be!!!
3. Massive consumption of Dutch Letters has caused waist lines to expand...causing a spreading out of the fanbase...and therefore fewers bodies in the stands, while still filling up the stands!!!
4. Central fanbase isn't all it's been made out to be!!!
5. Central SID actually makes an accurate count of bodies in stadium as opposed to making up a number!!!

Nah, I don't think Central fans are bored with winning. I don't know what the deal is -- last year we were at both Wartburg and Simpson (and of course Dubuque), and those particular games are big crowd draws. Interesting.... WH were the numbers for regular season games, or did they account for the post-season too?

[doolittledog]

I will add that my theories were meant to be humorous and not to be taken very seriously...maybe I should add more smilies when doing these. 

[Walston Hoover]

Those are numbers from all 8 home games.
Olivet had a horrible gate
and your home schedule this year brought in no big games. Probably a big part of it, but you guys darn near had the lowest attendance in the conference. I don't count Cornell since a large portion of their players and fan base are a greater distance away than most of the other IIAC schools.

[dutchfan1]

Those are numbers from all 8 home games.
Olivet had a horrible gate
and your home schedule this year brought in no big games. Probably a big part of it, but you guys darn near had the lowest attendance in the conference. I don't count Cornell since a large portion of their players and fan base are a greater distance away than most of the other IIAC schools.

Agreed -- those numbers are pretty pathetic, especially considering the calibur of talent on the field....

[DutchFan2004]

Over 6 games, Drake averaged 4293 per game.
Wartburg had 4476
Central had a paltry 1925 per game in a conf championship season. Not exactly something I would call great fan support.
Others-
BV-2780
Coe-3271
Cornell-800
UD-1901
Loras-1246
Luther-2999
Simpson-2300

One other factor to consider, aside from parents and girlfriends, schools probably draw their largest support from alums. I'm not sure exactly how large Drake is, but I think its somewhere around 5000, which doesn't seem that large, except that is is twice as large as any IIAC school but Luther. They should have a lot more in attendance than any IIAC school.
ALso-10,216 showed up to watch Drake against UNI. That helps those attendance numbers quite a bit.

10 of 11 of Drake's wins are against Waldorf, UIU, or UW-Platteville. The 11th is against Billy Penn

A few theories...

1. Winning is getting boring for Central fans
2. Central cheerleaders aren't as good looking as they used to be!!!
3. Massive consumption of Dutch Letters has caused waist lines to expand...causing a spreading out of the fanbase...and therefore fewers bodies in the stands, while still filling up the stands!!!
4. Central fanbase isn't all it's been made out to be!!!
5. Central SID actually makes an accurate count of bodies in stadium as opposed to making up a number!!!

As far as attendance goes I think the Central Home Schedule was a little weak with opponents this year.  There were not real rivalry games.  We played the Knights at Wartburg for the IIAC Championship that should have had a big draw.  Coe was at both Wartburg and Central this year, but wasn't that homecoming for the Knights and with the added attraction of Mr. Suckow transferring that might have been a little boost.  There were 4500 in attendance more for Wartburg.  I did find that both Wartburg and Central played UD at UD and for that game Central attendance was 1943 and Wartburg's was 1,322.  BV played both teams on the road and Central had 3000 while Wartburg had 2900.  I don't think you can draw conclusions based on total yearly attendance alone.  The schedule has something to do with the numbers.  Also if I am not wrong I think Central puts an estimate down as the students do not pay and they do not count the attendance so the crowds could be off a bit.  

[DutchFan2004]

Doolittle,

Didn't take offense at your attendance post.  I know you jest.  I don't know if the numbers are all that off considering that most of the big games were on the road.  The numbers I got were off the IIAC website for attendance.  There were not many instances of apples and apples.  I do think the UD game is one that may be offered as comparison as if memory serves me correctly both of those games had championship implications.  The BV game is kind of similar as BV was an underdog to both teams.