Football Championships

[SpaceRaider]

Maybe someday soon MT will be playing on this day...

CUSA-CG: Southern Miss at Western Kentucky 11:00 am ESPN2 / WatchESPN


AAC-CG: Temple at Houston 11:00 am ABC / espn3

SEC-CG: Alabama vs. Florida 3:00 pm CBS / CBS Video

MWC-CG: Air Force at San Diego State 6:30 pm ESPN2 / WatchESPN

Pac-12-CG: Stanford vs. USC 6:45 pm ESPN / WatchESPN / espn3 Skycam

ACC-CG: Clemson vs. North Carolina 7:00 pm ABC / espn3

Big-Ten-CG: Iowa vs. Michigan State 7:00 pm FOX / FS Go Video

 

[SpaceRaider]

CUSA Championship preview

 

[SpaceRaider]

pick six by usm makes 21-7 Eagles 2nd qtr 9:46

 

[MidTnBlues]

I'm really enjoying this game right now

 

[ToddMalone]

pulling for WKU

 

[ToddMalone]

I-hate-WES-tern
(clap-clap, clap-clap-clap)
I-hate-WES-tern
(clap-clap, clap-clap-clap)

but I still want them to win today

 

[ToddMalone]

looks like there's a good crowd at the WKU-SMU game.
Great football weather, too.
Good crowd. Good atmosphere. Good weather.

Damn.

Triple damn I say.

 

[SpaceRaider]

with :11 wku ties it up just before halftime

 

[BlueRaider95]

wku fans booing injured players for USM. Sounds about right.

 

[C-Bow]

WKU 45
USM 28

Western Kentucky wins the C-USA Championship.

 

[ToddMalone]

Go to h***, Abalama.

You, too, Climpsun.

 

[blueraiderJT]

I was at the CUSA championship game and I have to say that WKU had a great environment. I've never been there before and I respect what they do there.

The stadium looks cool with the bricked up look and the connected walkway where the students sit in the grass. The clock tower ringing in the quad after the win was neat. They let the fans on the field and I got to go on the field with my buddy. He's a big WKU fan and has been to MT games with me and I wanted to go to a championship game. Glad I did. It was fun.

The athletic dept. and marketing has their act together. I love MT to the death but WKU's overall fan experience is better. Ours feels like going to a funeral sometimes. I go to MT games regardless and I always will but WKU has a fun environment. Our athletic dept. could learn from them.

The injury booing came because it appeared that USM players were purposely going down to slow down the game. I mean it was like every other play and then the player that would be hurt would come back in 2 plays later like they never were injured. After the 10th time, it seemed a tad fishy.

 

[THEBLUERAIDER]

Wasn't attendance only 16,000?

 

[blueraiderJT]

If it was, I couldn't tell from where I was sitting. It looked packed in most areas. The student zone was full. USM brought about 1,000. It felt a lot closer to 20k to me.

 

[BlueRaider95]

They showed the replay on almost every injury and I never saw one that was faked. Announcers were even saying how bad the booing was.

 

[T2Tool]

The bottom line is WKU has won a conference championship in C-USA. MT has not even played for a championship.

 

[blueraiderJT]

Actually, the 16k number of attendance is incorrect because there are reports of the ticket scanners not working correctly on 2 of the gates. I thought so because it looked pretty filled up in there.

 

[mtfblue]

When they showed the upper deck, it was empty. So it probably was correct

 

[blueraiderJT]

LOL. I was in the upper deck. It wasn't empty. It filled up more by the end of the first quarter. It wasn't a sellout but it was well repped and the environment was better than anything we've had in years. They did it right.

They also had high school state championship games being played there right after the game was over so that impacted attendance too.

The advantage of a smaller stadium is that even if the crowd isn't a sellout, it's compact and brings them all in together which makes it seem more full and makes the environment really fun.

We need to tarp the endzone seats where the scoreboard is or remove that section all together and put in some type of cool tent/food watch section with a walkthrough zone that could be bricked up with some personality. Wouldn't cost a ton and would force the sidelines to look better on TV. Make the stadium smaller and bring folks together more. We're never going to sell out as long as they show every game on TV now so accept that and make it cooler with a better environmental setup.

 

[Hop45]

I thought about going to the game as well, but we recently sold our house and have to be out in a hurry, so I spent all weekend boxing up and going to storage unit

 

[AustinLewis]

I was at the CUSA championship game and I have to say that WKU had a great environment. I've never been there before and I respect what they do there.

The stadium looks cool with the bricked up look and the connected walkway where the students sit in the grass. The clock tower ringing in the quad after the win was neat. They let the fans on the field and I got to go on the field with my buddy. He's a big WKU fan and has been to MT games with me and I wanted to go to a championship game. Glad I did. It was fun.

The athletic dept. and marketing has their act together. I love MT to the death but WKU's overall fan experience is better. Ours feels like going to a funeral sometimes. I go to MT games regardless and I always will but WKU has a fun environment. Our athletic dept. could learn from them.

The injury booing came because it appeared that USM players were purposely going down to slow down the game. I mean it was like every other play and then the player that would be hurt would come back in 2 plays later like they never were injured. After the 10th time, it seemed a tad fishy.

Football
WKU has done a FAR better job of cultivating relationships with alumni and the surrounding community than MT has done. They (WKU) also do a good bit hiring within the WKU family.
Last few football coaches
Jeff Brohm (current) - previous position was OC at WKU
Bobby Petrino (2013) - previous position was HC at Arkansas
Willie Taggart (2010-2013) - previous position as RB at Stanford, WKU alum and previously served as WR, QB, and OC at WKU
David Elson (2003-2009) - previous position was DC at WKU
Jack Harbaugh (1989-2002) - previous position was an asst at Pittsburgh

Basketball
Ray Harper (current) - previous position was asst on the WKU staff, WKU alum
Ken McDonald (2008-2012) - previous position was asst on Texas staff, was asst on the WKU staff 1998-2003
Darrin Horn (2003-2008) - previous position was asst on Marquette, WKU alum
Dennis Felton (1998-2003) - previous position asst at Clemson

Women's Basketball
Michelle Clark-Heard (current) - previous position was asst at Louisville, WKU alum
Mary Taylor Cowles (2002-2012?) - WKU alum and served as asst on staff before leaving for one year. Returned after one year to become HC

As you can see, many of the HC had previous experience at WKU and the athletic department staff is filled with alumni of WKU. As a result, their athletic department is full of people working for a cause they believe in and are passionate about their work, as opposed to seeing the job as a stepping stone to another position. Passionate people are effective and driven to succeed.

 

[TeKEraider]

LOL. I was in the upper deck. It wasn't empty. It filled up more by the end of the first quarter. It wasn't a sellout but it was well repped and the environment was better than anything we've had in years. They did it right.

They also had high school state championship games being played there right after the game was over so that impacted attendance too.

The advantage of a smaller stadium is that even if the crowd isn't a sellout, it's compact and brings them all in together which makes it seem more full and makes the environment really fun.

We need to tarp the endzone seats where the scoreboard is or remove that section all together and put in some type of cool tent/food watch section with a walkthrough zone that could be bricked up with some personality. Wouldn't cost a ton and would force the sidelines to look better on TV. Make the stadium smaller and bring folks together more. We're never going to sell out as long as they show every game on TV now so accept that and make it cooler with a better environmental setup.

Perception is reality. We need to lower capacity. Lets say that they under counted attendance by 2k as some of their fans are suggesting that's still only 18k for a championship game. We bring in over 20k for mid-season games with the right opponent. Do people really doubt that we would do better? Come on. We had 20k for an October Marshall game coming off of 3 straight losses in 2013 and 18.6 for Troy the year before in November. I can't imagine less than 25k here for a championship game. Particularly one with perfect weather and we were favored.

 

[MTFNBY5]

I think we can't discount the culture created decades ago when the basketball team at WKU was habitually on the national radar. MT never had that in any top-tier sport.

Another factor which plays into the difference between WKU and MT is the distance between the schools and a major media market. WKU has a larger "sphere of influence" than MT. (as has been proven MT's sphere of influence barely reaches beyond the campus). There may be quite a few UK fans in Bowling Green but they don't have to compete with what MT has to.

 

[AustinLewis]

MT needs to shrink the stadium significantly (down from nearly 31,000 to approximately 25-26k). IMO, the best way to do this is through
1) End zone facility next to the Murphy Center. Ideally, this end zone facility would contain a small number of box seats, indoor suites, coaches offices, new locker room, equipment room, and meeting rooms.
2) Turn scoreboard end zone into a grass berm (seriously, kids love the grass berm at WKU) and move the Kids/family section to the scoreboard end zone.