Re: Wisconsin Hockey G2O - Making UW Hockey Great Again
- The crowds are getting smaller. I don't think I've seen a smaller crowd and that's saying something. Sad although I believe this will change over time... I hope. It's gonna take a lot longer than many thought though and even if it improves, will never again be what it was.
The crowds are still feeling the effects of that 2012-14 stretch of apathy. And yes, that stretch includes a pretty good team and a downright elite team, but "college hockey" itself fell off the map, and teaching people to care is harder than hoping they'll drop 24 bucks on a team they heard might be good. But I've definitely seen worse. It was horrific for sure, but I'd classify it as a "UW Hockey, as a whole, is in serious trouble" crowd, rather than a "this isn't even a shell of its former self, this is what I see on BTN when watching Ohio State games -- something entirely different" crowd.
(Again, it was definitely horrific. If you showed me last night's crowd 5 years ago, I would have thought that that was below the floor that the crowds could hit. Knowing what I know now...it's not as far below that floor as some other crowds.)
I know I've written paragraphs upon paragraphs on this before, so I'll spare everyone from that, but you're right on about getting crowds back something that will take a long, long time (i.e. many, many years), and letting the culture around the fan base stagnate 4+ years ago would rear its ugly head down the road. This also came up 2 years ago with the decision to not fire Eaves - one more year without incredibly massive (and obvious to the public) change was much more than one year of trying to rebuild what they had.
The biggest issue is that it's not about fans coming "back." Fans and local media alike have been talking about the fans "coming back." I know what they mean - fill the Kohl Center again - but it makes it sound so easy. It makes it sound like the way demand for Maple Leafs tickets went down when they were terrible, where all the local residents and kids growing up were still becoming Maple Leafs fans. Big Badgers hockey fans coming back is not the issue. Many users of this board already came back. You stopped going to games, UW gave you a good reason to attend games again, and you attended games again. The issue is would-be fans never becoming fans in the first place. If people aren't into college hockey at all, they're not going to care about the team like you do.
To describe the team itself as a "sleeping giant" would be fair. To describe the UW hockey fan base as such would be optimistically ignorant, because there aren't 15,000 people in the area posting on the USCHO board. If somebody isn't already engaged in the
activity of being a fan - going to some games is one thing, but following them and being emotionally attached (even if you can't get to many games) is what makes a fan engaged. Think about all the students and other locals in the area in the past 6+ years who simply haven't been exposed to any kind of buzz around this team. Many of those people, if they were here 10 years ago, would have become UW Hockey fans, all else being equal.
That's why I've maintained that they (i.e. the athletic department) absolutely have to treat UW men's hockey like it's a brand new major D-I program, like Penn State. Not literally; UW has plenty of history to help hype it up, but they cannot just fall back on "Wisconsin hockey has the best fans and we believe in them." They've been stepping it up tremendously in the past couple of years, but it is a
long way to stretch from 2011 to now.
I know I said I'd spare the long paragraphs (this was nothing
), so I'll finish with a positive - despite small numbers overall, the student section had plenty of newbies get a surprisingly good taste of what the student section is supposed to be like, from actually being engaged all game to improvising chants (and it wasn't just older alumni). After Sunday's opener, I legitimately feared that we were past the point of no return on that front - the percentage of diehard fans were too low compared to the rest to bounce back. I was pleasantly shocked, all things considered. Of course, the newbies saw what the rest of the Kohl Center looked like (which doesn't exactly leave a "UW Hockey is a big effing deal; get into it!" impression), but it was better than some recent games---it is definitely worth making it a "thing" in your life if you're a sports fan at UW. Like the rest of the crowd, it'll take a very long time to get it back, but I do have hope that it's on track (having feared it was all the way off the track).
