I'm going to guess Octoberbreak has been during a home football weekend at least the last 6 years. What's a constant result of this? An empty-ass student section, some years less than a thousand have attended, like vs Minn in either 2010 or 2011.
Thus it's apparent the AD could give a crap less about trying to work with the Big Ten and/or the university administrators to organize the calendar with a prime concern over student attendance (btw, tv schedules are set through at least 2019. It's beyond ridiculous Purdue fails us here repeatedly and doesn't try to fix it.)
So given that, WHY THE FCK are they suddenly worried about moving the Bucket so it's not over a break so the students can be there? The reason crowds have been down the last few years is because the team has stunk, don't over react and fix something that isn't broken!
If Purdue wins, fans will come back; even students will come back early....IF you give them a good, fun product to watch and a game in which they can expect to witness their top rival being hammered as they have for so many years in a series in which Purdue has won 2/3 of the games.
DON'T END a tradition of ending the season with what I believe will be top 7 in most-played rivalries in D1-A CFB in a decade or so (we will pass Tex-ATM, Mizz-KU, and a couple others that have gone on hiatus due to the conference realignment age) Sure there have been a couple blips like in the 2001 due to the September tragedy in NYC where we've ended with a different team a week later in December, but 99% have ended with our in-state conference rival and that shouldn't change. I don't know why Morgan Burke and Mitch Daniels suddenly have moving the Bucket Game on the brain, and even worse have suggested moving it to a neutral site in Indy where there'd be close to zero student attendance and is an area hat is 70% IU fans. Look to fix the problem elsewhere, like, within the damn football program.
(And on top of that, with a 14 team league, if all Big Ten teams are to be playing in the final week, it works out perfect that IU and Purdue play as cross-division rivals since it allows for 12 in-division match ups, increasing the odds 6 of the games being played are a playoff for a berth to Indy, just as Wisc and Minn was last weekend)
Sure I preferred it when the game was the weekend before Thanksgiving when the Big Ten for years ended their season traditionally, prior to the 12-game-always era. (Do you remember how hard Joe Tiller fought to keep it despite the destined change that was made so the Big Ten could be "part of the national conversation and relevant longer", rather than not playing for a couple of weeks as the rest CFB continued to compete into the 1st weekend in Dec? That old scheduling-model led to some very long layoffs such as the 50-some day break OSU had the year LSU beat them in the national title.)
But go back to our 56-35 win over IU in 2012, sadly one of the last truly entertaining home games and moreover, was the last Big Ten conference WIN I was able to see as a season ticketholder, even during a very meh up and down 6-6 year coming off a bad 4-8 2011 season, Ross-Ade drew 50,000. And per my memory there were a decent amount of students there, which is almost 10k more than showed up for any Ross-Ade home game in the once semi-promising 2014 that turned into a fart in a skillet.
Sidenote: how freaking sad is that? It will be at least 33 months between season ticketholders being able to witness conference wins? And that boys and girls is THEE problem: Purdue football, at the moment, truly stinks! Diehards and passive fans both know it, hence the stadium is an empty eyesore. And given the garbage November we just went through, it's tough to imagine much optimism developing that will get season tix over 20k next year, meaning it's going to be empty as hell again.
As was discussed in another thread regarding how lively and terrific Mackey was last night, full of energy for the NC State victory, first time it had legitimately been like that in at least 3 years....fans sooooo badly want to support a winner, and while Purdue has a smaller, more of a niche, pragmatic-spending fanbase relative to the majority of the Big Ten, it has many great fans. But after now a decade of first average, and then mediocre, and now pure utter shit, all but the absolute nuttiest of diehards (this idiot has his hand raised), have quit buying tix and no longer attend. They have found other cheaper, more frugal fulfilling ways to spend their fall Saturdays. What is the point of continually throwing money at something that is seemingly destined for failure? You can argue it only deepens the problem and if anything justifies and mandates so many of the AD's poor moves as it's akin to giving money to the panhandler and then hoping he/she find a job tomorrow (I don't wholly endorse this, but I can definitely buy the argument.)
My overall premise here is that if Purdue can dig out of this deep ugly-ass hole that football is in -- that's a direct result of numerous horrific decisions from the athletic department mixed in with bad luck and refusing from even attempting to spend commensurate with the competitive teams in the conference.....and you know, start winning again -- attendance will rocket back up, just as we will see happen in hoops this year and next. Meaning the Bucket game can eventually get back to having 55k-ish attending it (that is the rough new stadium capacity with the South Endzone having been torn out) and it will only be IU crying about bad attendance since they historically arebottom 2 in attendance due to being one of the losingest programs in D1-A football history. I realize there is no easy button and CFB is a zero-sum game, but despite many inherent disadvantages Purdue football has been a solid winning program before and CAN win again. And if it does, the fans will return, even on Turkey Day Saturday.
Am I the
only one fired up about this thinking how preposterous it'd be to move the Old Oaken Bucket game to another weekend? Anyway, I guess I started typing and never quit and my original point of just linking the story became an elongated rant. Hopefully it was coherent enough that you were able to get something out of it.
This post was edited on 12/4 1:00 AM by JHetfield99
http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/purdue/2014/12/03/earlier-bucket-game-big-ten-would-consider-it/19854643/
Thus it's apparent the AD could give a crap less about trying to work with the Big Ten and/or the university administrators to organize the calendar with a prime concern over student attendance (btw, tv schedules are set through at least 2019. It's beyond ridiculous Purdue fails us here repeatedly and doesn't try to fix it.)
So given that, WHY THE FCK are they suddenly worried about moving the Bucket so it's not over a break so the students can be there? The reason crowds have been down the last few years is because the team has stunk, don't over react and fix something that isn't broken!
If Purdue wins, fans will come back; even students will come back early....IF you give them a good, fun product to watch and a game in which they can expect to witness their top rival being hammered as they have for so many years in a series in which Purdue has won 2/3 of the games.
DON'T END a tradition of ending the season with what I believe will be top 7 in most-played rivalries in D1-A CFB in a decade or so (we will pass Tex-ATM, Mizz-KU, and a couple others that have gone on hiatus due to the conference realignment age) Sure there have been a couple blips like in the 2001 due to the September tragedy in NYC where we've ended with a different team a week later in December, but 99% have ended with our in-state conference rival and that shouldn't change. I don't know why Morgan Burke and Mitch Daniels suddenly have moving the Bucket Game on the brain, and even worse have suggested moving it to a neutral site in Indy where there'd be close to zero student attendance and is an area hat is 70% IU fans. Look to fix the problem elsewhere, like, within the damn football program.
(And on top of that, with a 14 team league, if all Big Ten teams are to be playing in the final week, it works out perfect that IU and Purdue play as cross-division rivals since it allows for 12 in-division match ups, increasing the odds 6 of the games being played are a playoff for a berth to Indy, just as Wisc and Minn was last weekend)
Sure I preferred it when the game was the weekend before Thanksgiving when the Big Ten for years ended their season traditionally, prior to the 12-game-always era. (Do you remember how hard Joe Tiller fought to keep it despite the destined change that was made so the Big Ten could be "part of the national conversation and relevant longer", rather than not playing for a couple of weeks as the rest CFB continued to compete into the 1st weekend in Dec? That old scheduling-model led to some very long layoffs such as the 50-some day break OSU had the year LSU beat them in the national title.)
But go back to our 56-35 win over IU in 2012, sadly one of the last truly entertaining home games and moreover, was the last Big Ten conference WIN I was able to see as a season ticketholder, even during a very meh up and down 6-6 year coming off a bad 4-8 2011 season, Ross-Ade drew 50,000. And per my memory there were a decent amount of students there, which is almost 10k more than showed up for any Ross-Ade home game in the once semi-promising 2014 that turned into a fart in a skillet.
Sidenote: how freaking sad is that? It will be at least 33 months between season ticketholders being able to witness conference wins? And that boys and girls is THEE problem: Purdue football, at the moment, truly stinks! Diehards and passive fans both know it, hence the stadium is an empty eyesore. And given the garbage November we just went through, it's tough to imagine much optimism developing that will get season tix over 20k next year, meaning it's going to be empty as hell again.
As was discussed in another thread regarding how lively and terrific Mackey was last night, full of energy for the NC State victory, first time it had legitimately been like that in at least 3 years....fans sooooo badly want to support a winner, and while Purdue has a smaller, more of a niche, pragmatic-spending fanbase relative to the majority of the Big Ten, it has many great fans. But after now a decade of first average, and then mediocre, and now pure utter shit, all but the absolute nuttiest of diehards (this idiot has his hand raised), have quit buying tix and no longer attend. They have found other cheaper, more frugal fulfilling ways to spend their fall Saturdays. What is the point of continually throwing money at something that is seemingly destined for failure? You can argue it only deepens the problem and if anything justifies and mandates so many of the AD's poor moves as it's akin to giving money to the panhandler and then hoping he/she find a job tomorrow (I don't wholly endorse this, but I can definitely buy the argument.)
My overall premise here is that if Purdue can dig out of this deep ugly-ass hole that football is in -- that's a direct result of numerous horrific decisions from the athletic department mixed in with bad luck and refusing from even attempting to spend commensurate with the competitive teams in the conference.....and you know, start winning again -- attendance will rocket back up, just as we will see happen in hoops this year and next. Meaning the Bucket game can eventually get back to having 55k-ish attending it (that is the rough new stadium capacity with the South Endzone having been torn out) and it will only be IU crying about bad attendance since they historically arebottom 2 in attendance due to being one of the losingest programs in D1-A football history. I realize there is no easy button and CFB is a zero-sum game, but despite many inherent disadvantages Purdue football has been a solid winning program before and CAN win again. And if it does, the fans will return, even on Turkey Day Saturday.
Am I the
only one fired up about this thinking how preposterous it'd be to move the Old Oaken Bucket game to another weekend? Anyway, I guess I started typing and never quit and my original point of just linking the story became an elongated rant. Hopefully it was coherent enough that you were able to get something out of it.
This post was edited on 12/4 1:00 AM by JHetfield99
http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/purdue/2014/12/03/earlier-bucket-game-big-ten-would-consider-it/19854643/
