re: SVP One Big Thing today

There are a lot of reasons that less people are going to the games.

LSU games have always been an all day event. Moving so many of the big games (nearly all of them) to day games has started to kill that tradition. Between getting to the game and setting up your tailgate, you almost immediately have to head over to the stadium and can't really enjoy things as much.

Big games are going away. LSU used to have lots of huge home and away games versus OOC. The moves to both 12 game regular season schedules and conference championships have killed that. Look at some of the previous years' OOC competition for home games:

1980 - FSU, KSU, Colorado (all at home)
1981 - Oreg St, FSU (home); ND (away)
1982 - Oreg St, FSU (home);
1983 - FSU, UW (home)
1984 - Arizona (home); USC (away)
1985 - UNC, ND (away)
1986 - A&M, UNC, ND (all at home)
1987 - tOSU (home); A&M (away)
1988 - A&M, Miami (FL) (home); tOSU (away)
1989 - FSU (home); A&M (away)

That's 10 years for the most part where LSU was relatively good. Lots of big OOC games. The television contracts have given LSU tons of money, but in the end have killed watching the product live. Now big games are all going to neutral sites and killing OOC home games as LSU is left with games like Kent State, AUB and freaking Furman.

In the end, the TV personalities can whine all they want, but its largely their faults in large part as much as anyones.