Filling the Agganis Gap

One day, hopefully not too far in the future, the BU Terriers will draw 5,000+ fans at home games, instead of the 1,363 they averaged during the 04-05 season.

What keeps the attendance numbers hovering around the year they signed the Magna Carta? As a major obstacle holding back the BU program, I'm sure this will emerge as a running theme on this blog. A few different reasons for poor attendance pop into my mind right away, none of which are very convincing: the absence of a winning basketball tradition, the looming shadow of the hockey program, lackluster conference opponents, an apathetic student body, the distractions of the big city, lame facilities, and a hundred more. I could debunk all these one by one, but it's not necessary; all of them have proven (here and elsewhere) they can be overcome, and some are just plain wrong. None are good enough reasons why only 1,300 people at a 30,000 student school can go see a Division I basketball team which has spent the last 4 years in the post-season with 20-win records.

One thing I do think can be drastically improved is the way the team is marketed to the student body and the local community. The Sports Marketing department, God bless 'em, needs to move beyond free t-shirts and pizza dashes to get butts in the seats. One suggestion would be packaging the experience in some way with BU's other big-time commodity, the hockey team. But in order to be considered a big-time program, it needs to be portrayed that way by its marketing efforts... and it ain't done with layup contests and performances by Phunk Phenomenon alone.

Thankfully, part of maintaining that big-time atmosphere has already been addressed: the opening of the 7,200-seat orgasm known as Agganis Arena. Make no mistake: that place was built for hockey, but it's the basketball palace that the BU men's basketball team deserves. And Agganis deserves a big-time college hoops program, and ours is ripe to make that leap. In the meantime, let's see what can be done to fill that 5,837-person gap.