One of the classes I’ve taken as a student in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism is a class called Precision Journalism. In it, students learn how to scour the Internet for raw data and then analyze it by using programs like Excel, common sense, or both.
What does this have to do with football? Hold on, I’m getting there.
Most of what we dealt with in the class was hundreds of thousands of lines of Census data and city budget statistics, but occasionally we would analyze data like batting averages and draw conclusions.
So, when I got into yet another argument about why ASU football (see?) has a hard time filling the stadium and getting people to stay past halftime, I decided to crunch some numbers.
To start with, the argument that the Sun Devils lack tradition can be knocked out almost immediately. ASU and UA are proud participants in one of the longest-running rivalries in the U.S. and are proud owners of the oldest trophy in college football.
ASU also has a famous, nationally recognized coach in Frank Kush, and has won the Rose Bowl, although people seem quick to forget it.
The Sun Devils’ all-time winning percentage is .613, which is a great record. By comparison, Florida has a .631 record, Texas A&M boasts a .599, and Wisconsin has a .569 percentage. ASU is right there with the best of them.
Of course, it’s hard for a team to retain fans when it hasn’t been to a bowl game in a few years, but the drop off was steep: In 2008, average attendance was 63,837. The next year it fell to 48,556.
The question is, why?
I picked a few test schools that are widely known to have rabid fan bases. Georgia, Wisconsin, Penn State, LSU, Michigan and Oregon were all included. I also threw in UA for good measure.
Quick disclaimer: I am not Hal 2000, and may have made a mistake. I also did not have the time to assemble a database with all the schools in the FBS, although I was tempted. This may not be the best sample ever, but it’s what I went with.
The first thing I looked at was out-of-state enrollment. I thought it was reasonable to think that schools with a high percentage of in-state students would have a more passionate fan base, just because the students grew up rooting for their college team.
Right now, 26 percent of ASU’s students are listed as out-of-state, although the university analysis stated that the number has increased in recent years.
When I looked at Georgia and LSU, the numbers were promising. Only nine percent of students at Georgia are out-of-state, while the Tigers boast just 17 percent.
But at Oregon, a staggering 41 percent of the students are from outside the Beaver State. The Badgers can say that 32 percent of their students are out-of-state, and Penn State can say the same about 25 percent of its attendees.
So that’s out. It obviously doesn’t matter where you’re from, as long as you like football.
The other big argument is the Valley is so large and there is so much to do around Tempe, that it’s easy to find something more interesting than watch a mediocre football team.
Here’s what I came up with for that theory:
I couldn’t just look at the populations for each college’s city because in Tempe, it takes you just five minutes to get to Scottsdale, Phoenix, or even Mesa.
Instead, I looked at the number of people living in the metro areas around each city. Georgia, Penn State and Oregon all have less than 360,000 people living in the metro area around the campus. Michigan, Wisconsin and LSU all have under a million, and UA has just over that number.
On the other hand, there are 4,192,887 people living in the Phoenix metro area.
Like I said before, this isn’t exact. But this has to be why attendance took such a dive. New York has no real popular college football teams. USC consistently sells out, but they also dominate every year. And word out of Los Angeles is that UCLA is having trouble filling its seats as well.
But clearly being in a big city is a big part of why the stadium is half-empty when the Sun Devils go 6-6.
So, what’s the moral of this story? Don’t be a sheep, and don’t let Scottsdale and Mill distract you. You’re only in college once, and getting to sit in the student section and yell your head off is something you’ll never be able to do again.
The Big Bang isn’t going anywhere (although I hear Barney’s Boathouse moved.) But there are only seven home games.
Get out there and fill those seats.
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
