Getting the crowd into game
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
A bowl-bound 9-3 home team, the chance to end a decade-long drought against a nemesis and the prospect of a shootout in the Senior Night regular-season finale.
The University of Hawai'i's game against San Diego State had all of that Saturday night.
What it didn't have was a crowd.
Just 32,892, the second-smallest turnout of the eight-game season, showed up to see the Warriors accomplish a 10-win season for only the second time in school history with a rousing 41-40 victory over the Aztecs.
Those who found their way into Aloha Stadium rose to the occasion in decibels beyond their numbers, especially in a thunderous fourth-quarter comeback.
But the size of some of the crowds this season, as underlined by Saturday's attendance, has to be a concern as UH looks to the future and even the upcoming ConAgra Foods Hawai'i Bowl.
Consider that the Warriors drew more through the turnstiles coming off their worst loss of the season, a 58-31 pounding by Boise State in October, than they did Saturday night. Who knew that a game against Division I-AA Eastern Illinois would provide UH's second-largest crowd of the season, 37,986?
Overall attendance averaged 35,704, slightly less than both last season (35,995) and 1999 (36,202), UH's first season under head coach June Jones.
The dip in attendance can be written off to the introduction of pay-per-view sales this year, money recaptured through subscription fees. And, indeed, Jones says, "I'm not surprised. Pay-per-view is the reason."
That should be easily fixable by raising the $12.95 single-game price so that it isn't such an inducement for a whole family to stay home and watch the game for less than the amount of one adult ticket. "Whatever that right price is, we have to find it," Jones said.
The bigger, more enduring question is how does UH boost its attendance back to where it was the last time it won 10 games in a season?
Not since 1992, when UH went 10-2 in the regular season under Bob Wagner and 11-2 with the Holiday Bowl victory over Illinois and Top 20 finish, has the Warriors' season average topped 40,000 at the turnstiles.
If the UH football program is to prosper and grow to the point where it can regularly compete for a place in the polls and trips to bowls, that is the neighborhood it needs to return to in terms of attendance.
But there are a lot of pieces to that puzzle beyond just pay-per-view: parking concerns, caliber of opponents, ticket surcharges, marketing, stadium operations, security, ticket sales, etc. And that is where the challenge lies.
How UH addresses it over the intervening eight months will go a long way toward making sure the Warriors draw more of a crowd next season.
