Attendance

[Bulldog2323]

I believe Drake was trying to be "more family friendly." They moved women's weeknight games up to 6:00 PM at the same time for that reason.

[BCPanther]

I believe Drake was trying to be "more family friendly." They moved women's weeknight games up to 6:00 PM at the same time for that reason.

UNI did the same thing with women's and volleyball games. I hate it, it's so hard to get there on time after work. Whole lot of departments out there with all sorts of solutions looking for problems.

[E-Villan]

I believe Drake was trying to be "more family friendly." They moved women's weeknight games up to 6:00 PM at the same time for that reason.

UNI did the same thing with women's and volleyball games. I hate it, it's so hard to get there on time after work. Whole lot of departments out there with all sorts of solutions looking for problems.

"Solutions looking for problems" is exactly right. Our idiot former AD did the same thing, except with the men's program. Same line about attracting families. It doesn't take a genius to look at demographics and realize "families" that would attend a game don't live anywhere near downtown. Evansville isn't huge, but it's spread out enough that it is illogical. To get off work, pick your kids up in the suburban areas, make sure they are ready, feed them so you don't have to take out an equity line at the Ford Center, drive downtown, get parked and in the arena by 6:00 PM is impossible. My kids are grown and I still missed several tips, and even games because I couldn't get there in time. As a result, the crowds grew smaller, and the marketing should have been for The Villages or Life Alert. He also axed the band, and brought in a hip-hop DJ. Seniors loved that......

AD Ziggy wasn't here a month before he announced games would be moved back to 7:00 PM and reinstated the band.

[squirrel]

Bradley tried the 6 PM start thing a couple years ago and it failed. There were several businesses that also ran shuttles for the 7 PM starts, but with the switch to 6 PM, had to stop because most of them relied on hotel shuttles, most of which remained in operation for the hotels until 5:30 or 6 PM. So the switch had a negative impact there, as well.

[racernation]

We come from a conference where double headers were the norm. At Murray, it was women's tip at 5pm and men's tip at 7. The men never tipped at 7, obviously, and was anywhere from 7:20 to 7:40. It was terrible on families, old folks who don't like to get out, and bad for marketing. Thankful for the MVC.

[Kyle_Saluki_17]

Question for Murray fans.

Aren’t the Racers about to do some renovations to the Arena? When is that supposed to happen? And also, what are they actually planning on doing?

I went there to watch SIU in December. One thing that would make it better… the top level seats are a really long way from the court. That place needs to be built more vertical than horizontal.

[racernation]

Question for Murray fans.

Aren’t the Racers about to do some renovations to the Arena? When is that supposed to happen? And also, what are they actually planning on doing?

I went there to watch SIU in December. One thing that would make it better… the top level seats are a really long way from the court. That place needs to be built more vertical than horizontal.

Completely agree. The arena was originally built as a multi-purpose facility in 1998, which I believe helped get state funds for the project. The upper level seats are a joke.

The entire "Making Our Move" campaign with facility enhancements was brought out the months preceding the MVC announcement. Crickets ever since. Some think the across-the-board facility upgrade videos/announcements were just to help get us in. The quality of the renderings support that notion. However, I think there are intentions of doing renovations at the CFSB Center but there isn't enough money I think to pull it off any time soon.

[RacerJoeD]

They’re doing the fundraising now.

[Bulldog2323]

Drake did the doubleheader men/women a couple times too, but they cleared the arena between games and made everyone buy tickets separate for both games. Not much point in having a doubleheader if you're going to do that. They haven't done it since the women went on their 40+ game winning streak while the men were at the bottom of the Valley pre-DeVries.

[Bulldog2323]

I also wish Drake would stop charging for parking. It's easy to get around if you know what you're doing, and people in Des Moines generally hate paying for parking under any circumstances. I feel Drake could easily recover the revenue lost from the gain.