Some Kentucky football fans wear that ‘long-suffering loyalty’ tag like a badge of honor, and understandably so. It’s harder to be a Kentucky football fan than a Kentucky basketball fan, frankly, and it’s a different experience.
There’s historical evidence for a claim that Kentucky football fans have stuck through the Wildcats through thick and thin. Just like South Carolina fans advertised their unwavering support for a struggling program before Lou Holtz’s arrival, Kentucky fans have pointed to the fact that it hasn’t been uncommon for the Cats to rank right around the Top 25 in attendance, even in some years when things have gone poorly.
But as SEC Country’s Joe Mussatto reported on Thursday, Kentucky’s season ticket sales are lagging. The university has sold less than 33,000 season tickets going into the 2017 season. And consider:
- Kentucky’s home slate includes games against Louisville, Tennessee and Florida.
- Kentucky is coming off one of its three Florida bowl games in program history.
- Kentucky returns as much talent and experience as the program has had in some time.
To be fair, there are bigger trends that are undoubtedly contributing to the lagging ticket sales. Kentucky isn’t the only school that’s seeing a sizable portion of its fan base opt to stay home and watch the game on television, where there’s DVR, easier bathroom breaks and more of the day available for more college football games, family time and non-sports related weekend activities.
There’s also, as local radio host Larry Glover pointed out on his Thursday show, those ‘flex pack’ ticket options that allow Kentucky fans to pick a few home games to attend at a lower cost, getting the experience of Kroger Field while not having to pony up for games they might not attend, or while not signing off on a seven-Saturday commitment to football games that ultimately take up six hours, eight hours or more (between travel, tailgating, traffic and TV timeouts) for a lot of people.
Furthermore, it’s not easy to win back a fan base after a long period of football so bad it made you want to turn the channel if you were sitting at home, or leave early if you were in the stands. Remember, Kentucky got to that 40-0 point against Vanderbilt, when the kickoff-level crowd became an object of ridicule by opposing fan bases on social media. One seven-win season is obviously enormous progress when Mark Stoops took over a team that couldn’t win an SEC game, but it’s going to take a string of winning seasons and more high profile wins, especially in the SEC, to put more butts in the seats again, and especially to sell more season tickets.
There’s a good parallel situation in Major League Baseball right now. Not perfect, but it works. The Houston Astros tore down their shoddy operation several years ago and went full-blown rebuild. There was a franchise that had a loyal fan base and strong attendance figures for a good number of years in modern history. But that rebuild, with all its bad baseball and the frustration and anger it caused for some, led to many fans just deciding to stay home. Even now when the Astros are on pace to finish with one of baseball’s best records in quite some time, they’re floundering with middle of the league attendance numbers. It takes a while to get people back on board, even when it seems like they should already be on the bandwagon.
Still, Kentucky has reduced the capacity of Commonwealth Stadium from 67,000 to 60,000 in the new Kroger Field and there’s no reason a proud, ‘long-suffering and loyal’ football fanbase shouldn’t be able to sell more season tickets. Kentucky may still be a basketball state, but the university still doesn’t have the competition of pro sports franchises, has overwhelmingly won the in-state battle for hearts and minds and competes in the SEC, where big opponents and fever-pitch football obsession rules the fall.
And there are only six, seven or eight home games in any college football season, compared to 80-plus for baseball.
There will always be the diehards, and I’m talking to those of you who refresh the House of Blue and frequent CatsIllustrated.com, which is undoubtedly home to a huge portion of the Big Blue Nation that’s counting down the days to football and takes the offseason recruiting as seriously as the games.
But those season ticket numbers, y’all. They’re not pretty and they’re hard to explain.
