re: Not LSU related but one question in regards to the USC Trojans baseball facility upgrades

I lived in Orange County and worked in LA county. I love college baseball but where USC is located, in particular, is a nightmare for traffic.

A 7:00pm, Friday night first pitch means you’ll need 1.5 hour drive just to get to the stadium.

It’s not for lack of talent in the region. SoCal is still a baseball talent machine but USC just doesn’t seem to care as much. Fullerton and others have had more success in the “modern” era, by far.

For a long time, youth baseball in California was the equivalent of college football in the south. Engrained in the culture. And USC ran a lot of natties off that.

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What has never made sense to me is why USC doesn’t have a softball team with all the talent in Souther California. Would probably be very good quickly and a good add of a popular womens sport.

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UCLA and Arizona were the dominant programs in softball. Just imagine how good the Pac12 could be if they actually kept the talent at home

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Total College Baseball Home Attendance, 2023

Rank. Team Attendance (Games)

1. LSU 447,527 (40)

2. Arkansas 370,940 (38)

3. Mississippi State 332,838 (30)

4. Ole Miss 323,047 (32)

5. Florida 259,236 (43)

6. South Carolina 256,075 (36)

7. Texas 242,264 (36)

8. Texas A&M 195,183 (35)

9. Southern Miss 175,740 (34)

10. Tennessee 171,151 (39)

11. Oklahoma State 162,378 (34)

12. Clemson 157,814 (37)

13. Virginia 154,507 (42)

14. East Carolina 149,652 (34)

15. TCU 145,744 (34)

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For context Tennesse was ranked 10th in attendance with a per game "paid" average of 5000 fans per game.

So even as SEC the hot bed for college baseball.....per game attendance is well behind the leaders in attendance for women's college basketball a sport routinely lampooned here.

And I'm all about baseball...just some context.

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Said "podunk" town doesn't have several hundred thousand homeless druggies, massive numbers of its citizens moving to other states, raging crime rates, taxes out of the wazoo, etc etc etc

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Sadly....the number of homeless druggies is fairly startling here too(I work on Siegen Lane so I can attest) and the crime rate is very comparable to L.A. in fact the murder rate per capita in B.R. is easily higher, and population exodus, we got that too as a state and in BR proper. Now the tax rate - yes better.

USC has millions of people to draw from but rarely do
they ever show up for USC sports.

I love college baseball, but I get it. Unless you have a relative playing, why would you go to see USC play baseball when you could go to a Dodgers game. The level of play in MLB is far superior to college baseball, more so than NFL to college football or even the NBA to college basketball.

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For context Tennesse was ranked 10th in attendance with a per game "paid" average of 5000 fans per game.

So even as SEC the hot bed for college baseball.....per game attendance is well behind the leaders in attendance for women's college basketball a sport routinely lampooned here.

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You do realize that Tennessee's baseball stadium only has a listed capacity of 4,045, right? Using the numbers listed above, Tennessee averaged appx. 4,388 per game. (171,151 / 39) 108% of capacity. It is entirely possible, perhaps likely, Tenn. would have averaged much more than 4,388 fans per game...if their stadium allowed them to. Thus, using Tenn. "low" attendance numbers to argue WBB is more popular is a bit disingenuous because the only reason Tenn. couldn't draw more baseball fans is because their stadium literally could not hold anymore.

Perhaps a better comparison is South Carolina. Using the numbers above, USC averaged 7,113 per game in baseball. The No.1 ranked USC WBB team averaged 12,924 per game. However, it must be noted that USC's baseball stadium holds 8,242. While the basketball stadium, Colonia Life Arena, holds 18,000. That means, on average, USC baseball is attracting 86% capacity of their home stadium, while the WBB team is drawing 72% of capacity.

Certainly you can make the argument that ~13k is greater than ~7k, thus WBB is clearly more popular than baseball at USC. However, would that be the case if the baseball stadium had a capacity that equaled that of the basketball stadium? There would be an extra 10k of available seats. Presumably, if the percentages of capacity filled were to remain the same the baseball team would draw more fans.

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USC has lots of entertainment competition

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That and who the hell wants to go into Watts for a college baseball game? USC isn't exactly located in Bel Air.

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USC is private… they don’t have to comply with Title IX spending parity.

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I'm pretty certain this is 100% false.