It's actually hilarious how many Iowa fans I know that are also Notre Dame fans, so the obsession with Notre Dame makes complete sense.
Iowa Beat Writers
- Thread starter CyTwins
- Start date
Seems like you went way off on a tangent from your original “gotcha” question that failed miserably.
Maybe the argument should be how many fans actually come to the game and not how many tickets are sold. Bill's point was that ISU coming to Kinnick draws a full house.
Fact of the matter is that Iowa would not go out there and schedule a blue blood opponent if ISU was not on the schedule. There's no shot. They'd end up scheduling schools very similar to ISU or worse.
Tickets sold without butts in seats is the worst possible scenario for driving revenue actually
I would be fine with scheduling schools similar to the ISU teams under Campbell. That would be schools like Miami, FSU, UNC and Washington in my book. Maybe have an outside shot of some neutral site games like Wisconsin has been able to get as well.
I understand you won't get parking, concessions and maybe restaurants or hotels, but selling a ticket even if not used is still much better than not selling the ticket at all.
Is it though? If Iowa sells out and they contract out how much help they'll need for that week and 10-15% of the fans don't show up, now you're overstaffed for 4-5 hours while paying them, what, $15/hour?
I bet Iowa staffs the same amount of people for every game whether they get 60,000 or 70,000. Also, this isn't an Iowa problem. This happens at every event in the country whether it is a concert or sporting event. I bet there will be a lot of empty seats in the Jack this weekend with the weather and the game not being of much importance to some fans.
You're also comparing a conference game while discussing wanting to drop the Iowa State game to get rid of home and homes so you can play more games at home.
If Wisconsin had a historic OOC rival they wouldn't be playing those sorts of games though.. And what would be the point of doing a H&H with any of those teams when those fanbases wouldn't make Iowa as much $$ as ISU does.
There is no good argument for Iowa dropping the game other than they get their feelings hurt by it. Plain and simple. If Notre Dame TRULY wanted to play Iowa, Iowa would make it work. But they don't.
I don't think Iowa would have much trouble selling out those kind of games if Iowa was projected to be pretty decent. So I'm not sure about a revenue drop at all and might even be a gain if opposing fanbases wanted to come to Historic Kinnick and participate in the wave. Plus these visiting fans would get hotels and eat out, something that not many ISU fans have to do.
Neither side is above playing the game. In the big picture, we are two schools in power 5 conferences in a state with a small population. The schools aren't that different. Some Iowa fans need to realize just how unimportant their school is on a national level and some ISU fans need to let the whiny little brother thing go. We should play the game, but I'm at a point where I don't care if we do.
I don't think visiting Kinnick and seeing the wave for those fanbases would be as appealing as you believe it to be. I also think there's any way they'd spend more $ than ISU fans do when they're in IC. Plus the few thousand kids from surrounding instate schools who show up to IC to tailgate, stay with friends, and obviously spend some coin. Tons of kids would even go there on Thursday for the party.
The comparison wouldn't be close.
I was in IC this year for the game. The amount of ISU fans there was incredible. No other opposing fanbase would come anywhere close to that.
Same can be said for Ames when the game is there.
If you turn it sideways it kind of looks like Brian Ferentz.