Well, ignoring the elephant in the room is almost impossible in this case, but i'll try. The fact is, people don't want to buy an entertainment product that's not entertaining. Everything else is ancillary to the product on the field, which is, as mentioned above, not entertaining.
1. Scheduling. Everyone is excited about every football season every August and September. Even me, even with who we are stuck with, I always get excited for the start of the season. Every year, probably due to the necessity for money games, we come out of September with a losing record. I did a post a few years ago, that, in all Stock's years, we only had a winning record into October like 3 times or something like that. By the time MTSU starts to get competitive, the novelty of football is over and people aren't paying attention. When you win doesn't matter when it comes to the all important "bowl eligibility", but when it comes to getting people excited for your product, winning in September>>>>>winning in November.
MTSU might be doomed to 6-6 for eternity, but if you're 4-2 going into mid-October, you're going to sell a lot more tickets than if you're 2-4. Still gonna end up 6-6, but you will sell more tix.
2. Make it more fun. If you can't win, (and we can't), at least make it fun. Like I mentioned above, at the end of the day, you're selling an entertainment product - not a whole lot different than going to a movie, a circus, concert, whatever. If people aren't having fun, they're not coming.
One of the big problems is that this program has no personality whatsoever. Our head coach couldn't care less about the fans and has the personality of mold. I'm not saying go full on Savannah Bananas, but get some social media stuff going. Have some fun with the players and coaches. Release some slick hype videos. Sell a T-shirt of the month (and, no, not just a black MTSU one). Have a video showing players having a belly flop competition or a paintball match or a home run derby - get some personality, generate some warm fuzzies.
2. NIL - we need a collective. I'm not going to buy a MTSU Player T-Shirt. I don't care enough about these guys individually (I don't really know who they are) and with blah the product we have, it's not like we have any really elite players or personalities that you can rally behind.
But a collective, which can distribute out the funds to the players, is probably the way to go. Start a collective and sell memberships - look at what UT has (
https://thevolunteerclub.com/). The collective then works with staff to distribute funds to players, recruits, transfers in or out, whatever is needed.
If you had someone start an MTSU collective, sell memberships for 10 bucks a month, send me a sticker and a koozie or maybe an autographed 8x10 every quarter - i'd sign up.