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Post by softintheo on Jun 16, 2006 13:51:19 GMT -5
I don't understand why anyone would want to fib about how big their arena is.....someone is trying to pull a quick one here. While inflating the size of our arena, let's also make up some other positive statistics too... Last year the average starting salary of our 4,000 graduates was $500,000.
The publisher of the Wall Street Journal is so tired of writing stories about successful graduates of St. Bonaventure University he has began substituting Harvard, Yale, and Columbia as these professional's alma mater.
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Post by Phantom on Jun 16, 2006 14:19:37 GMT -5
Once again, many of you (in particular Phantom), are missing the point. Do we want people to think that the RC is smaller than what you report? How does that look to potential recruits? People already think we live in the middle of nowhere. Hey, I rather have a make believe 6,000 seat arena rather than a 4,000 seat arena. Someone may have counted all the seats but what you are forgetting is the formula Bonas measures this by. The number of seats in the RC plus the number of students attending SBU, minus 20%. Jessica Alba on a hot summer day. Picture that in a thong!!!!!!!!! I am burning up. You are correct...I am truly missing your point! Aah yes, to truly impress potential recruits we should fabricate some truths and play fast and loose with the facts. I know, I know it happens!!! But, wait, didn't that get us into a little trouble awhile back?
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Post by mrbonaventure on Jun 16, 2006 14:56:44 GMT -5
This wouldn't be the first time guys inflated the size of their arena. It won't be the last time as well. Arena size is completely different than admitting a welder to school.
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Post by ripreilly755 on Jun 16, 2006 15:26:36 GMT -5
Inflating attendance figures is a strict no-no !
Read this article regarding our former Dave Diles and the trouble at EMU:
Willis to confront league
By Nathan Bomey / Former Managing Editor TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2005
Eastern Michigan interim President Craig Dean Willis plans to confront the Mid-American Conference about what the university has described as widespread inflation in the reporting of athletic attendance figures.
Willis told the Echo that he plans to bring up the issue for discussion at the MAC Council of Presidents meeting June 6.
An internal committee created by the president to investigate EMU's attendance figures suggested in its seven-page report this month that attendance figures inflation happens at many mid-major schools. Willis has alleged the same.
Willis acknowledged that his ultimate responsibility is to "worry about Eastern," but he said he wants to see the MAC determine a transparent process for counting fans at athletic events.
"I would be happy about that," he said. "But I can't make them."
Gary Richter, the MAC's assistant commissioner for media relations, rejected EMU's allegations in an interview last week. He said the university is misinformed.
"I don't know how they arrived at that conclusion," he said. "I can't believe that it's valid."
Willis, who has about two months until his tenure at EMU ends, told the Echo that he was planning to give the investigative committee's report to the school's incoming president, John A. Fallon III, when Fallon visited campus last week.
The committee revealed in its report that the athletics department intentionally inflated the football numbers to meet an NCAA policy requiring that schools average 15,000 fans a game to maintain Division 1 status. The policy was suspended in January and altered in April to require Division 1 schools to average 15,000 in paid attendance one of every two years.
The report says the inflation was "consistently more than double" actual attendance and was rationalized to keep up with other schools.
"Although not independently verified, past experience of staff members working at other institutions and anecdotal evidence from others interviewed strongly suggests that inflation of actual attendance is commonplace among mid-majors," the report says. "This practice is rationalized by the belief that everyone else does it, so therefore we must also do it so as not to be disadvantaged from a public relations/image perspective."
Richter said the entire MAC shouldn't be implicated because of EMU's problems. He also criticized Willis' recent statement that "all the other schools in the MAC inflate their numbers, too."
"I think it's totally unfair to throw a blanket statement like that over the entire league," Richter said.
The university's three-person committee -- chaired by Jim Vick, EMU's vice president for student affairs -- put most of the blame for EMU's football and basketball attendance inflation on outgoing Athletics Director Dave Diles, who resigned to take the same position at Case Western Reserve University, a Division III school in Cleveland.
But Diles, commenting publicly for the first time on the committee's attendance report Wednesday in the Ann Arbor News, denied accusations that he ordered the inflation of the numbers.
"That is completely inaccurate," Diles was quoted as saying in the News, calling claims that he inflated the numbers "fictitious."
The committee wrote: "Although there is no evidence of a written directive, it is generally understood that the athletics director encouraged the practice, set expectations of what the attendance figures would be and in most cases determined the announced attendance after getting information from other staff."
Diles has told the Echo and the News that his involvement in the football attendance figures process was limited.
Reached Friday afternoon, Mike Malach, EMU's associate athletics director for administration, said Diles was generally responsible for the final numbers in both football and basketball.
But Malach denied that members of the EMU baseball team hired to count football fans for the athletic department were told to inflate the figures, as the university's report suggests. He said the players "were not told to get to the target" number.
The committee -- which interviewed 22 people for the report, including three baseball players -- said the athletics department ordered the inflation.
"There is strong evidence that suggests athletics management staff, and subsequently baseball players, were told to 'click, click, click' to get to the targeted numbers," the committee reported.
EMU's ticket management office came up with an average of 6,188 fans for the five football games last year at Rynearson Stadium. The baseball players, hired separately by the athletic department to count everyone at the stadium, came up with an average of 14,047.8 for the five games. The university reported after the season that it averaged 16,060 fans for the six "home" games, including a well-attended game played at Ford Field in Detroit.
Contrary to a report Friday in the Ann Arbor News, the university has not come to a conclusion regarding how the process should be straightened out. Malach refuted the report, which asserted that the process has been resolved.
Interim Athletics Director Bob England told the Echo that he is in the process of determining how to transparently report the real attendance figures. But he said that he is committed to reporting accurate figures.
"I can't possibly have a count of 98,000 when there's 3,000 in the stands," England said.
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Post by ripreilly755 on Jun 16, 2006 15:30:38 GMT -5
And they don't count attendance at the RC - they estimate it. The standing joke is they arrive at the attendance figure by the first license plate they see.
"Oh, there goes a blue Blazer, CVC-4985, that will be the attendance for tonight".
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Bona799
Sophomore Member
Posts: 102
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Post by Bona799 on Jun 17, 2006 13:49:49 GMT -5
If we were just over estimating our attendance by a 100 or so that would not be a big deal. But the difference looks like 1200 seats or 20% more of what it really is. 20% is major. Corporate execs get sent to jail for lying about their company figures by 20%.
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Post by bonafide on Jun 17, 2006 14:15:28 GMT -5
6,000 seat capacity? Huh?
The sad fact is that a good chunk of SBU's 4,000 seat capacity was empty this past season.
Average per-game attendance last season of 2,900 would be about right. Sad....but filling the seats requires some excitement which translates into wins. It would also strike me that gauging attendance would be a simple matter of counting the tickets collected at the door......but then that might result is some embarassing figures.
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Post by magnusbu on Jun 19, 2006 9:05:39 GMT -5
The student count should be pretty accurate considering you have to swipe your card to get in. Plus they should know how many tickets they have sold to the general public. Thus they can come up with a pretty good estimate as to how many people attended the game. Attendance = # of students + (number of tickets sold x 75%). There is no way that the attendance only averaged 2900. Being at almost all of the home games, there was around an average of 4000 at least.
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Post by Phantom on Jun 19, 2006 12:35:46 GMT -5
Honestly, the total capacity is around 4700...so to average 4,000 we are talking 85% capacity. I was at every game and many times the arena was half (full or empty) depending on your outlook!
It is just a bit insulting they take out as many seats as they do and tell us the capacity is the same!
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Post by mrbonaventure on Jun 19, 2006 12:48:09 GMT -5
Why all the talk about arena size? Are we having an "arena envy" moment here? I'd rather have 6,000 stated. It makes SBU look like a happening university and community thing. Look at the Buffalo Bisons. There attendance figures are very misleading. Do they go by actual people in attendance or the actual number of tickets sold for each game. I think it is the latter. Unless things have changed every at SBU pays a Student Activities Fee. Including in that amount paid is attendance to Bona games.
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