re: What year did people stop having an interest in basketball?

I think you can see there's still some interest. Anger is better than ambivalence from my perspective.

But when did go from where it was then to where it has been for most of the folks posting here?

From my memory interest started to wane significantly the 3rd of Dale's last 4 years which were all losing seasons and his last season was as bad attendance-wise as any of Brady or Trents year.

Along that same time baseball really started to take hold to where even today LSU is an anomaly where only a small handful of programs in America garner anywhere near the interest and passion and none equal.

Couple that with Brady and Trents boring style of ball and wild inconsistency it's never been quite what it was.

There were some consistently good crowds in SEC games in 2000 and this year I think stats will show bigger crowds than any year since. Even 2006 we only had a couple of really good crowds and 2009 even though we won the SEC going away, pretty disappointing attendance.