Everyone knows that Long Beach is one of the biggest front running towns in America. Look at the Dirtbags they drew almost 3k last night, MVB almost sells out every game, When the Fab 4 was here MBB drew huge crowds. Like some have said you win Long Beach crowds will show up in big numbers.
Yes but my point has remained this: a winning program will attract more fans than are coming now.
We are not the only southern california school with attendance issues. All have to get the attention of students who have a lot of options in the region: this isn't the middle of Kansas or Spokane Washington.
What I'm saying is that men's basketball can do better than it has been doing. Interest has been dwindling the past several years.
Do you think the last home game of the season would have had a completely empty student section if there was wide interest in the program?
Again, you say things about men's volleyball but we still pull more than mens basketball and the atmosphere is far more electric. Does that mean every game? No. But which so cal school sells out every game? Pretty much no one.
We can do better in mens basketball than has been the case the past several years when people have been disappointed at the product. You can't win southern california crowds without a good product.
GO BEACH
KDSS read the article. It has the 80 percent frigare. As far as attendance of students go, if we had 1/4 of the myd filled with students, which the section holds less than 1/4 of the capacity. I would say that at most it would be 1000 students-more like 500. That's 1000 out of 35,000 students. This issue has nothing to do with Monson. It has to do with the students of today don't care.especially at a computer school.
Again I think some people here don't understand that since the early 2000s, LB State is not quite black and white: this conversation is clouded by the fact that the University has limited space for true ON CAMPUS housing (particularly because of the native American burial ground debate). There have been several attempts to build multilevel dorms, but it hasn't worked - leading to F. King Alexander having bought Brooks College to convert to dorms, etc. And yes a new hall was added recently.
And during Alexander's era there was freshman dorm requirement.
With this in mind, LB State isn't much more of a commuter school than UCLA and others, as Bill alluded too. They just have more on-campus housing.
My freshman class a massive percentage of people were from out of the area and particularly northern California. And all were crammed in apartments surrounding the campus and into Belmont shore (on paper, they might look like commuters but they are not pure commuters).
If we had more on campus housing back then, we would have no issues filling it, with nor cal people alone.
Yes, because the university promotes access to locals, of course like every so cal school, we have our fair share of pure commuters but so does any school in the Big West and in the LA area.
Fast forward to today and LB State is one of the most applied to universities in the country so you can make your assumptions there. Massive numbers from elsewhere.
So it's really about capturing the attention of full time students!!
And as someone noted below, look at men's volleyball. Even then, not even UCLA men's volleyball games draw as much as we do in the regular season. It's so. Cal - we have a lot to do, so it takes a winner to draw crowds.
Some people here are incorrectly assuming things from Dan Monson's era...here's the fact, people lost interest in Dan Monson's program, and Dan didn't help that either. That's why he's no longer here, that's the harsh truth!!!
Again, I feel like some people here are more fans of monson that LB State. The new coach and smitheran have the opportunity to change the script. The ball is in their court and people will become interested with a new program!
GO BEACH
We can use being a Comunter School as an excuse. And to a certain extent it’s true.
But we used to get 2 or 3 sell outs every year. Really every school in the LA area is a comunter school. We do have about 3000 students in the Dorms. We have to have winning teams. We have to have a coach who is willing to promote the team, both to students and to the community. We need give always to have to the students that come.
It can be done, we have done it before. It only takes 4200 folks to get a sell out. Also there are things inside the Myd that can be done better.
The 49er had an article in the latest edition pointing our that Long Beach is still a commuter school. It stated that 80% of the students commute. That is one of the reasons why student attendance at athletic events is so low. Theme nights like fraternity and sorority competition as well as volleyball games against top competition bring out the local students, but only enough to not quite fill the end zone student section. Long Beach has always had student commuter problem and is also major problem at all commuter schools, especially in the Big West. Todays on campus living students have other interests and also work. Check out the number of cars in the dorm parking lot on a Thursday night compared to Saturday. Winning is not always the answer either as shown by volleyball. The student section is not quite half full for games other than UCLA and Hawaii and we are #1 in the nation! Is there a solution to this problem?
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