WKU Football: Are Midweek Games Truly That Detrimental to Attendance?
This year begins Conference USA's new media deal, one that'll see WKU play on Tuesday night twice. Many think it'll kill attendance. But will it really?
It’s fall of 2021. Sources indicate to the Towel Rack that, while it’s not a done deal, there’s an agreement in place for WKU to join the Mid-American Conference. A couple of things have to break for the Hilltoppers to bolt the sinking ship that was Conference USA, but the framework is in place. (WKU publicly disputed any such deal, even if a handshake or gentleman’s agreement, had been made.)
Despite all of the good things that would have come from the Tops’ inclusion in one of - if not the - most stable mid-major conferences in the country, the opposition is loud an almost unified: The Hilltoppers should not join the MAC because of one reason - midweek football games.
Fast forward almost a full year later, to November 2021. Conference USA unveils its new media deal, which brings ESPN into the fold as a Tier 2 rights holder, meaning ESPN and its family of networks won’t necessarily get quality CUSA events (championship games across football, basketball, baseball and softball; top pick of 18 football and men’s basketball games annually), it will get a massive quantity of them, getting basically everything else not only for its linear channels but streaming rights, as well.
Four paragraphs into the press release, it reads: C-USA membership approved a linear television-friendly scheduling format for football that sees all October league matchups played on midweek evenings. The broadcast partners will share C-USA’s October weeknight football games on linear television across CBS Sports Network, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.
Not only did WKU remain in CUSA, which left a lot of fans with a sour and hopeless taste in their mouths, but they’re now getting mid-week football games, something the loud contingent against moving to the MAC was loudest about.
If you had to boil down the crux of the argument against midweek games, it makes sense: It’s an inconvenience for those not living directly in Bowling Green, therefore impacting fans’ ability to make it to as many games as they’ like. And it makes sense: If you’re a Louisville-based WKU fan, making a Saturday out of heading to BG, maybe do some tailgating, maybe even stay at the Drury Inn for an evening sounds like a great way to spend a weekend.
With a game kicking off Tuesday at 8 p.m., your enjoyable weekend turns into a rush-job to get into town, see the game, get back home (across time zones, mind you) and be a walking shell at work the next day.
Or, you could just stay at home and watch the game on TV (which is the whole point of such a schedule).
However, what if I told you that even as midweek games are bad for out-of-town fans, they’re great for students, especially at a commuter campus like WKU, and that means any negative impact on home attendance numbers will be minimal if felt at all?
The last time the Hilltoppers played a game on a Tuesday or a Wednesday was in 2013, when 16,359 went to The Houch on a Tuesday night against Louisanna-Lafayette. If we expand “midweek” to mean “not Saturday,” those numbers are good too:
2022: WKU’s second-best attended home game was on a Friday night against UAB (16,334: Thanks, DJ Shaq!).
2021: WKU took on FCS UT-Martin on a Thursday night, bringing in 16,236.
2019: Remember losing to Central Arkasnas to open the 2019 season? Also on a Thursday, and marked the second-best attended game against a non-power program that season (17,120).
But Fletcher, I know you’re saying to yourself, all of those games are great weather dates! It gets so cold in November!
Well, you’re in luck. Last year’s UAB game took place on Oct. 21. This year’s lone home midweek game (keep this in mind) takes place on Oct. 24, just mere days later.
MACtion Impaction
Let’s look at some data: I picked two MAC programs from last year to see how they fared.
According to D1Ticker.com, Miami (OH) posted the third-best average attendance last year, averaging a figure of 17,572 over five true home games. They also hosted two midweek games, both on Tuesday nights.
Tuesday, Nov. 8 vs. Ohio - 15,490
Tuesday, Nov. 22 vs. Ball St. - 14,021
That averages out to 14,755 a game. The RedHawks’ other three true home games averaged 15,270 fans, which includes a 21,168 figure for a home game against Western Michigan, far and away the largest crowd Yager Stadium saw. If you take that game out, the non-weekday home average was 12,097.
Yes, a small sample, but equal to that of the sample for midweek games.
Here’s another case study: Per D1Ticker, Bowling Green State came in the bottom half of attendance, averaging 11,663 fans. Like the RedHawks, the Falcons also had two home midweek games last year, both on Wednesday:
Wednesday, Nov. 2 vs. Western Michigan - 7,589
Wednesday, Nov. 9 vs. Kent St. - 7,291
That averages out to 7,440. When taking the non-midweek games into account, the Falcons averaged 13,774 (if you remove a 21,158 attendance against Marshall - once again an outlier - that number comes to 11,313).
While the overall trend looks stark, it doesn’t when you consider that starting in October, no BGSU home game had a crowd of over 10,000. In Bowling Green, Ohio, weather come October is a significant factor in a way it really isn’t in the real Bowling Green.
If You Ask Really Nicely…
I was really wanting to do a breakdown for the MAC school closest to WKU’s D1Ticker attendance figure (15,440) in Buffalo (15,510 - what a fun rivalry that would have been). The only issue with that is that Buffalo only had one home midweek game: The regular season finale on Friday, Dec. 2.
In fact, since 2015, the Bulls have played six midweek home games, excluding the Friday regular-season finale that is a staple of MAC scheduling (something I learned as I was writing this).
While we can’t do a numbers comparison from so few games from such a long time span, what we can deduce is that, if the WKU administration does deem midweek home games are detrimental to attendance, they can point to UB as an example to the conference schedule makers and request as few home games possible. And, if I’m CUSA, I’d imagine I’d want to do whatever it takes to appease my new flagship program.
One and Done
Earlier in the article I asked you to file a piece of information away. Time to whip it out. While there’s a stretch of four-straight weeks of not playing on a Saturday from Sept. 28 through the end of October, two of those games are on Thursday’s, which we’ve seen WKU play enough where it isn’t a major shock to the system, so disregard that for now.
Aside from those two Thursday games (vs. MTSU, 9/28; at Louisiana Tech, 10/5), the Hilltoppers will play a pair of Tuesday night games: at Jacksonville State on Oct. 17 and hosts Liberty on Oct. 24.
If that schedule were reversed, you could color me a skeptic: Even if the Hilltoppers have one or two loss to their name by the time a JSU team in their first FBS season comes to town, I don’t know how much juice will be in the crowd. However, Liberty was the highest-profile addition to the league and is considered WKU’s toughest test to challenge for a CUSA title. The atmosphere should be electric.
Between only having one home midweek game and it being maybe the biggest name on the home schedule not called Middle Tennessee, I am not at all concerned as to what The Houch will look like on October 24.
What the Future Holds
There are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to what future WKU schedules will look like. Will JSU/Liberty always be the Tuesday night matchups for WKU? Will CUSA stick to two October midweek games or will they move it later in the year/add weeks?
In four months, I could look really silly and we could be in for a long four years with midweek CUSA games when it comes to WKU’s (and others’) home attendances. But if there’s a perfect storm set up for what the bright side could look like, its this year: A high-profile opponent, a team that should compete for the conference crown, if not more, and an electric offense to watch that should be enough to sell itself.