• The KillerFrogs

The Disappearance of Amon G. Carter's Home Field Advantage and Ways to Fix It.

froginmn

Full Member
95% of the time you are correct. But I have had a couple totally miserable times with drunk and disorderly opponent fans, constantly screaming MFers and such right behind my wife and MIL that required getting directly involved. Again, this is extremely rare but it does happen and not pleasant.
To be fair, I have seen the same behavior from a few of our own fans.
 

Wexahu

Full Member
The bottom line is to win. That is how you solve the problem. Season ticket holders make a point to be at the game. Students make a point to be at the game. If the visitor know he or she is going to get drilled, they will stay away.

Fix our offense and problem solved.

Yep. There is no such thing as a smallish private school college football program that wins half their games and draws good crowds. TCU, Baylor, Northwestern, Vandy, Duke, Stanford, Wake Forest......every single one struggles with attendance and will struggle with attendance unless they have good teams. No amount of ticket sales tricks or smoke and mirrors will change that.
 

froginmn

Full Member
Not really. I think a seat being occupied by a "real" TCU fan is pretty black and white. "Real" literally meaning an actual person that occupies a seat and cheers for TCU.
It seems to me, though, that you admit that we don't have enough fans to fill all of our seats. Which would mean that those opposing fans will just be in different seats. To me that is just rearranging chairs; it doesn't really change the atmosphere. Is it 2% louder if our fans are slightly closer to the field? Sure, but who cares.

I feel like you are mostly upset about which seats those fans are in. That is a function of (largely) big money donors selling the seats they were given because of those donations.

Look, I'd love it if seats were allocated by "fandom" but they're not, and won't be.
 

DubaiFrog

Active Member
googled this pic from the 2006 Tech game from the old stadium just for contrast. Yes there were between 7-8k tech fans there, however you can see they were clustered in the visitors section, end zones, and upper deck. Frogs were solid purple in prime lower bowl west side and the old student section.

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Compare that to this shot of the Texas game this year, where there are solid pockets of visitors directly behind our home bench.

upload_2020-1-14_13-46-59.png

Probably close to the same % of frog vs visitor fans in the stadium, however completely different looks. this is where the problems lie.
 

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Pharm Frog

Full Member
googled this pic from the 2006 Tech game from the old stadium just for contrast. Yes there were between 7-8k tech fans there, however you can see they were clustered in the visitors section, end zones, and upper deck. Frogs were solid purple in prime lower bowl west side and the old student section.

View attachment 6697

Compare that to this shot of the Texas game this year, where there are solid pockets of visitors directly behind our home bench.

View attachment 6699

Probably close to the same % of frog vs visitor fans in the stadium, however completely different looks. this is where the problems lie.
Any pictorial analysis of red and purple is suspect unless one controls for shadows. Duh....
 
Just buy the tickets you want from StubHub. It's not that hard. If there is demand by TCU fans to sit in better seats, then spend the money and get those seats. Quit complaining about it. Meanwhile buy whatever season tickets you can get from TCU to keep accruing points. You can get the seats you want, be it for select games, or for the entire season, from StubHub. If you can sell your crummy seats, then go ahead. If not, take the loss. You're still supporting TCU, and still earning points.

The only reason TCU fans aren't sitting in the seats you complain about it because, well, there aren't enough TCU fans.

DubaiFrog, I was at that game. There were MANY Tech fans there, but it is hard to discern the purple from the red in the blended sections. That pic doesn't reflect the reality. I remember quite a few Tech chest-thumpers posting their own pics, showing what looked like a majority ot Tech fans. I don't think they outnumbered us, but it was pretty close. The East Side, North End Zone, and the Upper Deck were definitely majority red.
 

jake102

Active Member
To be fair, I have seen the same behavior from a few of our own fans.

The two worst experiences I've ever had at a sporting event were both caused by TCU fans. One was at the 2015 TCU Baylor game... totally bizarre situation. And the other was at the Big 12 CCG against OU. Granted it was a Tshirt TCU fan, but it was also pretty absurd
 

Mean Purple

Active Member
Yes, this is true. What's done is done. The question is, how does TCU regain the home field that was seen back at the old Amon G. Carter in 2009? Remember the Utah game? That was killed dead by the re-seating. How does TCU get that back?

If by cynically continuing to allow reselling as essentially a for-profit enterprise just to keep their own numbers up, well, that ain't happening. I moved from 236 because of drunken fools from other fanbases. Now my new section is getting bad. Why should I continue to purchase season tickets if all I am surrounded by is drunken Tech folk*? When I call it quits, those seats go to another Member in Good Standing of the StubHub Season Ticket Brigade. Yes, TCU sold those tickets. But at what cost?






*
Tech is too easy an example, admittedly.
Win so darn much that the Frogs are a seriously hot ticket. Demand so high that those seats can be negotiated for change.

WIN

WIN

WIN

rinse/repeat
 

Double D

Tier 1
That TECH game in 2006... that was a HOT day! Marvin White knocked the dog isht out of that TECH receiver!

googled this pic from the 2006 Tech game from the old stadium just for contrast. Yes there were between 7-8k tech fans there, however you can see they were clustered in the visitors section, end zones, and upper deck. Frogs were solid purple in prime lower bowl west side and the old student section.

View attachment 6697

Compare that to this shot of the Texas game this year, where there are solid pockets of visitors directly behind our home bench.

View attachment 6699

Probably close to the same % of frog vs visitor fans in the stadium, however completely different looks. this is where the problems lie.
 

ShinerFrog

Tailgating Command Unit
The only reason TCU fans aren't sitting in the seats you complain about it because, well, there aren't enough TCU fans.


This is wrong. We got "moved" out of our west side seats, which we had for 25+ years due to as someone noted, not being a loyal enough fan to write a large check to the athletic department. I have tried to relocate our six seat to the west side every year. There are not even four seats together, much less 6. Yet, most games I look across the field to where the old seats were and see them either vacant, or with with fan donned in orange or red.
There are plenty of TCU fans, not all have an unlimited entertainment budget. But even if they did, those seat are not becoming available for upgrades.

sf
 

Bob Sugar

Active Member
Piggy backing off of the "Season Ticket Holder Survey" thread, and since TCU only allowed 50 character responses, I've decided to discuss my concerns here. Everyone clearly has their own personal preferences regarding things such as what music is played, how loud it's played, how the team enters the field, what chants we do, who leads the chants, etc. But at the end of the day, most of these things are fairly irrelevant to the ultimate game day atmosphere and home field advantage we have (well don't have at this point).

What really matters at the end of the day (outside of winning) is getting butts in seats, and more specifically getting purple butts in our best seats. The seats between the 20s and closest to the field (both on the west and east side) are consistently way too empty or full of opposing teams' colors. Far too many of our stadium's best seats (not including the club seats and suites) are controlled by people that don't regularly use them. There are many reasons for this. Many donors control more seats than they need or can use. They have seats elsewhere in the stadium that leave their extra seats unused, given to friends or clients who end up being casual attendees (non TCU loyal fans that probably show up late, barely cheer, and leave early), or getting sold on the secondary market (often winding up in the hands of fans for the opposing team).

Yes, attendance is a problem across the country, as is stubhub reselling, and schools with smaller fan bases such as ourselves are much quicker to notice the consequences (especially during down years when the team isn't very good). But this is not an acceptable excuse for what causes, in my opinion, the biggest contributor to our stadium's home field advantage that has all but disappeared.

Just like every other school in the country, we have a core and loyal part of our fan base that consistently attends games. But rather than these people sitting in unison in our stadium's best seats providing some kind of coherent home field advantage, they are scattered throughout the stadium, a lot of them in the 400 seats or sitting on the east side only to look down and see better seats that have never been available during the upgrade process that are either empty or occupied by away fans game after game after game. It's extremely disheartening, severely fractures our fan base's unity, and is ultimately causing more and more people to reconsider whether they want to renew their season tickets.

There are no easy fixes, but I do think we've reached the point where more drastic measures need to be taken.

To TCU's credit, they did make a subtle step in the right direction by limiting how many seats could be upgraded this past off-season at 8 per account. Their logic was that there are very few accounts with more than 8 seats that get consistently used. According to someone I spoke with, most accounts with more than 8 seats typically have the extras going unused or being resold on stubhub. TCU's hope was to help level the playing field and prevent someone with 40 seats (most of them for reselling) upgrading all their seats before someone with 2 seats had the chance to upgrade theirs.

I totally agree with and appreciate this step forward, but this exact thing had been allowed for years, so unfortunately a lot of the damage has been done. For years people have been hoarding tickets to resell and upgrading their extra seats ahead of actual season ticket holders that intend to use their seats. Not being able to upgrade more than 8 seats last year doesn't change the fact that many really good seats are already controlled for the sole purpose of reselling.

As I previously stated, this creates a severe fracture in our stadium and is the primary reason, outside of the west side club, that it's almost impossible to find seats where you're not surrounded by opposing fans. I sit in row J, Section 234 (this is the 50 yard line for those that don't know off the top of their head) and there are seats next to me, in front of me, and behind me that are sold to away fans every single game. Seats that real TCU season ticket holders don't have access to, because they are controlled by someone that just resells them on stubhub.

TCU naturally hesitates to take any steps that are too drastic, because they know this will reduce the number of season tickets sold, a number that is already on the decline. But I also don't think they fully appreciate the number of people deciding not to renew their season tickets because of this exact problem that they are failing to legitimately address. It's simply not fun to attend a home game for your school and constantly be surrounded by opposing fans (especially when you have to deal with fans from schools like Tech, OU, Baylor, Texas etc.).

Here are practical solutions I think TCU needs to take to address these issues:
  • Start reaching out to season ticket accounts that are consistently reselling tickets on the secondary market, especially the seats that are resold for every game. TCU has tracked this activity for years, and they know every time a ticket is resold on stubhub. They just haven't done anything about it yet. Notify these accounts that if this activity continues, TCU has the right to revoke those seats from their account. This is not a novel idea, and it's been done across the country at school's where good seats were consistently being resold rather than sat it. It should be TCU's duty to ensure that our best seats are being sat in by TCU fans. Up to this point, TCU has not done that.
  • Put a ceiling on the amount of priority points you can earn per season ticket per year at 8 seats. As I was told by an employee at TCU, there are very few accounts that actively use more than 8 seats. The accounts that actually need more than that will continue to buy them, but otherwise, stop incentivizing people with priority points to buy an excessive number of extra seats just to resell.
  • Stop promoting Stubhub reselling. As it stands now, TCU literally has stubhub integrated into our online accounts. You can login to your TCU gofrogs account and automatically list all of your seats at the click of a button. Jeremy Donati has stated that he doesn't like tickets being resold on stubhub. If this is the case, why make it so easy to resell them? And even worse, why send season ticket holders emails promoting the ability to resell them on stubhub?
  • Lastly, something has to be done about our west side lower bowl. In its current state, it is an absolute joke. The seats and rows are way too far apart. That entire section needs to be reconfigured and resat. You could easily fit 2/3 more seat back chairs in that section than what exist now. We cannot continue to allow the section immediately behind our team bench to be so sparsely attended and void of any energy. It is terribly embarrassing and has a direct impact on recruiting and our team's energy level.

I know this is long and I know there will be smart ass comments. But I genuinely think these are practical steps that would help dramatically improve our game day atmosphere and home field advantage.

#MakeTheCarterGreatAgain
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No it wasn't ...not enough fans back in the day. It was better once Wacker came but the 84 Tcu/UT game was flooded with UT fans.

Yeah, outside of 84 and after the ncaa hammer dropped there wasn't much of a home field advantage under Wacker. There were numerous games with around 20k in attendance.
 

HFrog12

Full Member
Fine suggestions. I'd certainly be curious the cost to destroy and re-pour the lower west side, definitely a design mistake.

That being said - winning will cure 90% of the problem. I'm considering dropping my season tickets after next season, but it has nothing to do with opposing fans or empty seats. I've lost a degree of hope we can actually compete for a NC and we aren't trending in the right direction as a program. Combined with a move to Houston and two very young children, it's hard enough to make one game a year. The product is quickly becoming not worth the considerably greater effort. I'll probably never drop them because I have bad TCU football FOMO, but I'm considering it for the first time.

I read and was curious if I drunkenly wrote that. Turns out I have someone living the same life with the same dilemma. Houston fan who loves supporting the program, two young kids, and regularly gives tickets away to keep Frogs butts in the seats. It is getting harder and harder for me to justify paying for my tickets, but with two young boys I am afraid of giving them away too early and losing my priority spot, which as some have mentioned means next to nothing with competing with BMDs. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I married into a bunch of Cajuns and that product down in Baton Rouge is becoming much more fun to be involved with.

I truly do not know where the fix is, aside from TCU just conceding to minimal revenue. I come here and the other TCU sites and can't even sell my tickets for higher profile games for face or less. The only time people take them is when I give them away, which is often. I have said this on other threads but I truly believe it is much more of the obvious numbers and demographic issues. We don't have the alumni base when compared to our stadium size. The easiest fix to me is adding seats to the west side lower bowl, but I do not believe there are thousands of TCU fans who would jump at season tickets if some of the BMD's seats were relinquished and available, unless of course they are next to free.
 

tcumaniac

Full Member
Just buy the tickets you want from StubHub. It's not that hard. If there is demand by TCU fans to sit in better seats, then spend the money and get those seats. Quit complaining about it. Meanwhile buy whatever season tickets you can get from TCU to keep accruing points. You can get the seats you want, be it for select games, or for the entire season, from StubHub. If you can sell your crummy seats, then go ahead. If not, take the loss. You're still supporting TCU, and still earning points.

The only reason TCU fans aren't sitting in the seats you complain about it because, well, there aren't enough TCU fans.
I've always liked you as a poster and you've been extremely kind to me in the past, but with all due respect, I think you are way, way off here.

To your first point of "It's not that hard. If there is demand by TCU fans to sit in better seats, then spend the money and get those seats."
  • Your premise is a little silly. Of course there's demand from TCU fans to sit in better seats. The obvious problem is that those better seats simply aren't available.
  • It is my assumption that if someone was willing to stroke TCU a check worth tens of thousands of dollars, there may be some better seats that mysteriously become available that weren't otherwise available through the upgrade process. It would be dumb of TCU not to hold back a certain number of premium seats that are only made available to donors that want to cut the line with big donations. I have no proof that this actually happens, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.
  • Outside of a situation like that, the opportunity to upgrade to better seats is extremely limited, even for fans with relatively high priority point totals that have bought season tickets for years and donated lots of money. And it's not because all the "good" seats are controlled by TCU fans that use them. If that was the case, this entire thread wouldn't have even been necessary to start. The main problem which you continue to brush off and overlook is this: Many of our stadium's best seats, especially on the East Side, are controlled by people that only intend to resell them on stubhub. Until something is done by TCU to dissuade them from doing this, these seats will never be released, and they will never be made available to TCU season ticket holders.
This brings me to your next point: "The only reason TCU fans aren't sitting in the seats you complain about is because, well, there aren't enough TCU fans."
  • Come on man...this couldn't be further from the truth. There are more than enough TCU fans and season ticket holders to regularly occupy our stadium's best seats. And they'd be fully willing to pay a premium for those better seats. The problem is that a majority of our season ticket holders simply don't have access to them, and until something changes, they never will.
  • That is my entire argument and premise. Stop letting premium seats be controlled for the sole purpose of being resold on stubhub for every single game. Instead, get them in the hands of season ticket holders that will actually sit in them!
THE END!
 
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