Tonight's Attendance Is ...

Back before he was the Director of Athletics at Bradley University, Mike Cross was the Executive Associate Director of Athletics here at the U.

Every now and then, Princeton gets referred to as "The U" around here, just to keep things light.

Anyway, when Mike worked at Princeton, he and TigerBlog had great discussions about basically any and all topics in intercollegiate athletics. And movies. And TV. And everything else.

TB remembers when he first met Cross, back when he came here from Michigan a long time ago. His first impression was that of an academic, though maybe it was because he had a Ph.D. in education, something not nearly as common in athletic administration as, say, a law degree.

In fact, Cross' biggest strength here, and TB assumes in his current position in Peoria, is his pragmatism, which is about as valuable a commodity as one can have in any position. It's okay to have the grandiose conversations and the big dreams; it's just that they need to be balanced by the practical realities of the economic, political, human situation.

TB prides himself on his own pragmatism, which should never be confused with taking the easy way out or not being willing to evolve and try new ways of doing business. It's just that ultimately, there has to be an ability to see the big picture.

That doesn't mean that the conversations that TB and Cross had weren't valuable. Many of those conversations revolved around the idea of attendance at events, especially football.

TB thought back to those times talking to Cross as he looked at the home attendance for the three Ivy League home football games from this past weekend.

They were:

Butler at Dartmouth - 9,089
San Diego at Harvard - 5,272
Marist at Columbia - 3,933

Princeton's game at Lehigh was played in front of 7,346 at Goodman Stadium.

The game was played on a 100% perfect can't-ask-for-more weather day between two schools separated by a one-hour drive (so any Princeton fan could easily have gone), and the home team is a Top 15 Division I-AA team in the middle of a sustained period of excellence. And the stadium is a great place to see a game.

Add up those four games, and it comes to 25,640, or about a quarter of the number (98,782) that saw Penn State host Navy on a campus that is trying to get away from the football-runs-the-school mentality.

As TB and Cross spoke all those times, the two shared the main point, which is how is a school like Princeton (or any other Ivy school) supposed to know if it's being successful in getting fans to the game?

Should Princeton set a goal for average attendance in a year? Or are there too many variables that make that impossible? Is failing to reach such a goal, if set, a sign that there was something else that the athletic department could have done?

Princeton hosts Georgetown Friday night in its home opener.

On the one hand, the weather is supposed to be perfect again (75 degrees during the day, around 68 for kickoff, no chance of rain). Princeton Stadium is also a great place to see a game. Princeton seemed to be vastly improved in its game against Lehigh, and the Georgetown game figures to be a nice barometer of where the team stands right now.

Of course, it's also a Friday night at 7 and on ESPNU. And its the first meeting between the schools, rather than a traditional rivalry. And Georgetown isn't a big-name football team, even if it is a very strong football team the last two seasons.

So what would be a good crowd?

10,000?

7,500?

5,000?

Again, TB has no idea.