Where were the students??

[dogsrus]

If they're sports fans they know when and where the game is. IMO, most of the students don't care if there is a game or not. Don't blame the sports dept for not begging them to support their team.

Its like the other thread where the poster is upset BU soccer isn't getting more attention....while I feel his pain and understand his dissapointment its just the way it is.....soccer isn't huge to the general public and BU hoops isn't a big deal to many (most) students.

You can beg for more support from people for BOTH sports but, in the end, it is what it is.

I know soccer is there just like womens hoops but I'm just not interested much like most students don't care about BU hoops.

This fanbase was built from years of local town support on the backs of the Bradley/Caterpillar teams early on and has continued to be the towns team ever since.....

[Beninator]

Its like the other thread where the poster is upset BU soccer isn't getting more attention....while I feel his pain and understand his dissapointment its just the way it is.....soccer isn't huge to the general public and BU hoops isn't a big deal to many (most) students.

You can beg for more support from people for BOTH sports but, in the end, it is what it is.

I know soccer is there just like womens hoops but I'm just not interested much like most students don't care about BU hoops.

This fanbase was built from years of local town support on the backs of the Bradley/Caterpillar teams early on and has continued to be the towns team ever since.....

Speaking only about the basketball fan base, accepting that the basketball team is the town's team is relying on the status quo which IMO is terribly wrong! Take a look at the way the NFL is marketed. This is not your father's NFL where you were basically given schedules and expected to attend the Vince Lombardi games! Today, the NFL is basically marketing their games as a party event and going out of their way to target the female demographic. ie: see the new advertisement for women's NFL jerseys. I have attended numerous Indianapolis Colts games before and during the Peyton Manning era. Sometimes the product on the field was not the greatest in the pre- Manning days, but there was always the party event on the night before the game and the pre-game NFL experience.

[Bradleyguy10]

I haven't read these posts but all I can say is give the students a break. It's not like it's their job to come out to the games. Bradley is more of an academic school than an athletic school. Students don't choose to go to bradley for their athletics anymore. The only year that could evenly remotely resemble that is my year...the year after the sweet 16 run. Face it the SENIORS at Bradley now we're freshmen and newly exposed to the braves in the season they went to the CBI. Which was then followed by two progressively worse years. The students didn't come because first and foremost it was an exhibition game and secondly (but possibly just as influential) is the fact the team hasn't given the students a reason to be excited...a reason to WANT to go. I know if I were still in school and didn't care about sports it would be hard to get me to waste the majority of my saturday night watching the team lose to a DII school. Don't blame the students, blame the team. If they win, they will come.

[DUBrave5]

I think something major is being missed by the university / athletic department and it rarely gets brought up at all.

I'm not sure what the number is, but let's just say 40% of all students come from the Chicago area (maybe it's less, but whatever the actual number is, it's a pretty significant total based upon when I was there a few years ago).

Now try living up here and try to find any sort of Bradley coverage. Go to ESPNChicago.com, which is somewhere that tons of people go on a regular basis. Hover over the colleges tab and who do you see?

Illinois, Northwestern, Notre Dame, DePaul, Loyola, UIC, Illinois State, Western Illinois, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois

Granted many of these are Chicago area schools, but why in the world shouldn't Bradley be on this list?

Until Bradley gets its name out there better, people who care about sports aren't going to come to Bradley for that reason.

Agreed. I can honestly say that when I was looking at schools, I had no idea Bradley even existed. If it wasn't for a themed day at school when the teachers wore shirts from their alma mater, I would never have known that my AP U.S. History teacher graduated from Bradley, and I would never have ended up here. Kind of weird when I look back at it.

[FortyTwo]

Agree with the point about most students having no knowledge of Bradley basketball prior to coming to school here. I grew up around here and have been going to games since the 80's. Almost all the guys in my frat (most of which were sports fans) had no interest in Bradley basketball. Some of them didn't even realize we were division 1 or knew what conference we were in. They would make fun of me for being a Bradley fan and wanting to go to games calling it small time and a waste of a Saturday night. Definitely looked down upon by the kids coming from Chicago and other big cities.

And no offense to the Red Sea guys, but when I was in school the guys in the student cheering groups were the ones who couldn't get into a frat and the last thing frat guys wanted to be associated with were those guys, and by association Bradley basketball. And make no mistake, most student sports fans at Bradley are in frats and the frats control what is seen as a cool thing to do by other students.

Having a president who makes the point to all her minions (even in the athletci dept.) that Bradley is only to be marketed as an elite institution of higher learning, not on athletic teams isn't helping things. I heard she actually held one of her late night BU student events DURING the madness events back in October.

[theBUer]

Agree with the point about most students having no knowledge of Bradley basketball prior to coming to school here. I grew up around here and have been going to games since the 80's. Almost all the guys in my frat (most of which were sports fans) had no interest in Bradley basketball. Some of them didn't even realize we were division 1 or knew what conference we were in. They would make fun of me for being a Bradley fan and wanting to go to games calling it small time and a waste of a Saturday night. Definitely looked down upon by the kids coming from Chicago and other big cities.

And no offense to the Red Sea guys, but when I was in school the guys in the student cheering groups were the ones who couldn't get into a frat and the last thing frat guys wanted to be associated with were those guys, and by association Bradley basketball. And make no mistake, most student sports fans at Bradley are in frats and the frats control what is seen as a cool thing to do by other students.

Having a president who makes the point to all her minions (even in the athletci dept.) that Bradley is only to be marketed as an elite institution of higher learning, not on athletic teams isn't helping things. I heard she actually held one of her late night BU student events DURING the madness events back in October.

It's tough for a school like Bradley where it flies under the radar athletically. Even if you live in Chicagoland and have barely a passing interest, you would know about Illinois football or basketball and would probably watch a game if they are on CBS.

Then again, how many students at BU come here as a fallback option?

[BradleyBrave]

This thing is being dissected way too much. Unfortunately not everyone is as die-hard as most of us are on this board. It's about winning, plain and simple. Win the league and go the NCAA's regularly (or just go to the NCAA's regularly), students will be there in force. Muddle around the middle for a decade, and this is what you get. With as average as we've been save a couple weeks in 2006, the support could be a lot worse than it is. But that one half-season of greatness was 5 years ago, and most on campus now didn't have BU on their mind back then. Students on campus now haven't experienced anything to get them 'hooked'. On several levels, the importance of winning is as high as it's been in years on the Hilltop.

[Chico]

I think something major is being missed by the university / athletic department and it rarely gets brought up at all.

I'm not sure what the number is, but let's just say 40% of all students come from the Chicago area (maybe it's less, but whatever the actual number is, it's a pretty significant total based upon when I was there a few years ago).

Now try living up here and try to find any sort of Bradley coverage. Go to ESPNChicago.com, which is somewhere that tons of people go on a regular basis. Hover over the colleges tab and who do you see?

Illinois, Northwestern, Notre Dame, DePaul, Loyola, UIC, Illinois State, Western Illinois, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois

Granted many of these are Chicago area schools, but why in the world shouldn't Bradley be on this list?

Until Bradley gets its name out there better, people who care about sports aren't going to come to Bradley for that reason.

Some solutions:

- TV Coverage - it's almost non-existent unless BU plays someone really big and then their might be a mention on the news. You should be striving to be important enough to get every game mentioned, even if it's a score only (which doesn't happen a lot).

- TV broadcasts - it'd be nice to see an actual Bradley game on regular TV up here. You're telling me with the 52 local channels we have around here that Bradley couldn't make some kind of deal to just get the games rebroadcast on a local network? I know a bunch of alumni personally that aren't going to take the time to purchase the online game package, but if I tell them there is a game on a local station, they are likely to watch.

It's kinda like the Cubs on WGN - some people in random places become Cubs fans just because that is the only team they could see. If people are flipping channels ... there are some that are bound to stop and watch part of a game if it were on.

- Merchandise - Considering that we have a very nondescript logo and no mascot, maybe it's more difficult to make cool stuff to sell. But still, I never see almost anything up here in a store for Bradley. It's the whole "catch your eye thing" ... even if someone just sees it, but doesn't buy, maybe they think of it when they start planning on what colleges to visit. Of course, this would all become a lot easier if we had a better logo and mascot ... maybe the university is still planning on that eventually.

All I can do is provide my own personal experience of honestly knowing nothing about Bradley until I started looking at colleges. Then I read about the history, became a crazy diehard fan and I now I waste my time with all of you on the boards! :-) But if someone like me, who desperately wanted a team to latch onto as my college squad and followed college sports pretty closely from the beginning, doesn't know much about BU, how is the average joe going to know or care at all about the school?

Coverage of the BU games is not the point. The students are here already.

[RedSeaElite1]

And no offense to the Red Sea guys, but when I was in school the guys in the student cheering groups were the ones who couldn't get into a frat and the last thing frat guys wanted to be associated with were those guys, and by association Bradley basketball. And make no mistake, most student sports fans at Bradley are in frats and the frats control what is seen as a cool thing to do by other students.

Just to let you know. I'm in a fraterntiy (not a frat), and every guy on the board for the Red Sea are greek as well.

[Chico]

Just to let you know. I'm in a fraterntiy (not a frat), and every guy on the board for the Red Sea are greek as well.

Keep up the good work Red Sea. Fans like you guys don't need excuses, you show up and support your team and fellow students.

[amckillip]

Just to let you know. I'm in a fraterntiy (not a frat), and every guy on the board for the Red Sea are greek as well.

Primarily made up of two of the five largest as well...

[amettrick]

If they're sports fans they know when and where the game is. IMO, most of the students don't care if there is a game or not. Don't blame the sports dept for not begging them to support their team.

I couldn't disagree more. If they are HARDCORE sports fans, then yes, but otherwise you're off base. If the students didn't grow up in the Peoria area then they aren't going to know much about Bradley's sports teams until someone (the athletic dept.) advertises them and tells them about the teams.

Here's a comparison. Your statement is like saying "If they love good food, they'll know where the great places to eat are." But what if there is an amazing restaurant in Peoria with great food that simply never advertises or promotes its product. How would you expect someone who isn't from the area to know about it if nobody tells them?

[houstontxbrave]

Attendance is pretty much based on one thing and that is winning games.

You win games and people will show up, you lose games and muddle around being average they wont.

I guarantee you if Bradley goes into the Feb 1st game at home with Creighton in first place and with a very nice overall record the place will be full of students. If we go into that game at about .500 trying to get to 4th with a win, it will be just another Tuesday in Feb.

Everything and everyone is cool when you can associate with a winner.

[theBUer]

How many Bradley students are Cub fans? (rhetorical question) If they can support that franchise, then why not BU?

[unbekannt]

How many Bradley students are Cub fans? (rhetorical question) If they can support that franchise, then why not BU?

I do not want to be the lovable loser Braves. I'd jump off that bandwagon as fast as possible. On the same note, why not the Expos, Royals, Pirates, etc? Most franchises need to win to be relevant. Winning brings attendance, not the other way around. Just ask the Cubs.

I graduated recently as well, and I thought advertising for games was poor at best. You definitely had to be a fan to know what was going on, and few other students that I had daily interaction with were basketball fans. Bradley wasn't good when I was in school or just before I started. One major "problem" that most people here are overlooking is that the vast majority of the students go to Bradley for academic reasons. They're not at BU to be fans of basketball. A good team can quickly change that, but the culture of winning just isn't there right now. Bradley basketball is not an SEC football team. I would much rather have a good academic school than a good basketball school. Both should be possible at BU.