Army AF 2024 Officially at Michie

[WrekDivr]

Buddie announced that the AF game will be played at Michie. There was some speculation that it would be held off post due to stadium construction.

https://goarmywestpoint.com/news/2024/1 ... -2024.aspx

[wpgrad]

Leheigh. UAB. Rice. East Carolina. UTSA. And Air Force

[gabn92]

Leheigh. UAB. Rice. East Carolina. UTSA. And Air Force

Yup...looks just about like every other home schedule for the last 30 years.

[wpgrad]

Leheigh. UAB. Rice. East Carolina. UTSA. And Air Force

Yup...looks just about like every other home schedule for the last 30 years.

I definitely think the quality of opponents is the same. What I don't like about the AAC is that we are going to see the same opponents, and therefore the same states, year after year after year.

No more california (San Jose). No more Georgia (which has probably been our #1 state for the monken years). etc etc etc.

We go from playings 20-30 different schools across 15-20 states, to playing the same 8-10 schools year after year. That is why I think joining a conference sucks.

[WrekDivr]

Fair points, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that for a couple of reasons:

1. There are 4 teams in the AAC we are not playing at all in 2024 (South Florida, Memphis, Rice, and Charlotte), so there will be a change to about half of our AAC opponents from year to year.

2. Only half of the games re at home. With the evolving schedule noted above, we should see a team at Michie about once every 3 years. And that assumes the AAC stays static.

3. If you look at the states we do play in, they include Texas (4 teams), Pennsylvania, Florida, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Many of those are good states to recruit from.

[RABBLE]

After two years, this schedule will become pure BOREDOM. Same teams year, after year after year, after year. Fans will ger tired of this BULDUST in 2-3 years.
Army was AMERICA's TEAM for all these years. Now what we become? 8 state wonders.
USMA ought to be ashamed of itself by restricting itself. We ARE the nation's MILITARY academy. We should be playing teams from ALL OVER the country.
We chased the MONEY, not the fans.
So, we built a new east stand edifice. What for? Nobody will come watching the same teams all the time. It will become only a memorial to past glories. Tulsa? Birmingham? North Texas? Give me a damn break!
The past 30 years, the administrations have made many mistakes. Mark my word after following the Army team for three quarters of a century, joining the ACC will in time become the BIGGEST MISTAKE the institution ever make in its storied sports history.
At my age, I will not see this. Maybe that's a good thing. I am disheartened at all this. Really I am.

[gabn92]

Most Army fans will be fine with this schedule...it really is not substantively different than what we've had for decades at this point. Natural variation with AAC scheduling between home and away games from year to year, not playing every team in the AAC every season, as well as some variation in the 2 additional games Army schedules every season outside of conference play and the AF & Navy games will all provide some changes season to season. And by the way, we're likely not done with conference realignments so there will likely be changes to the AAC in the near future. When FSU leaves the ACC, there will be ripple effects for sure.

You can hate that Army is going to conference play but I just don't see quality of the Army home schedule as being a valid complaint/reason. It looks basically identical in quality and variety of opponent as Army has been bringing to Michie for a very long time.

At this point with the 12 team playoff, being an AAC member at least gives Army a conference championship to play for and in a dream season, being the 12th seed and a chance to shock the world.

[USMAPAFAN]

Rab makes a solid point in that the new slate of teams from the AAC won’t put fans in the seats. I agree the level of competition will be the same. I happen to think that teams like BC, Syracuse and even Holy Cross are a better draw to Michie than the AAC teams. I could be wrong but I will find it interesting to compare home attendance next year and in following years. Jeez if it weren’t for COVID we were going to have a home match up with Oklahoma.

[gabn92]

There's been a fair amount of opinion and conjecture about schedules and their impact on putting fans into Michie (by myself included), so I decided to take a look at attendance statistics and see for myself. I think there are some interesting trends/facts:

I went back to 2012 and looked at the attendance for every Army home game since then. That time period covers the last 2 years of the Ellerson era and all of Monken's years.

Season average attendance/game:
2012: 32,205
2013: 33,510 (best year)
2014: 33,171 (Monken's first year)
2015: 30,991
2016: 32,653 (first winning season under Monken)
2017: 30,924
2018: 31,693
2019: 30,989
Skipped 2020 stats due to COVID
2021: 27,247
2022: 28,647
2023: 29,016

Couple of thoughts/observations:
1) There seems to still be a COVID-effect on attendance. Worst 3 years are the last 3 after COVID, but each year improving...so hopefully the trend is in the right direction and attendance will continue to improve.
2) Winning didn't fill the seats. Army had a great run from 2016 - 2018, beating Navy 3 times, winning the CiC twice, going to 3 bowl games in a row and having a 10 and an 11 win season. None of that caused attendance to be as high as it was in Ellerson's last year (2014). For those wondering, the home slate that year was Buffalo, Ball State, Rice, AF, UCONN and Fordham. That's no P5 teams, an FCS team and the rest from Group of 5 schools.
3) If scheduling is supposed to fill seats...Army's schedule these past years hasn't done it. So, the fear that we're leaving something that's been working behind when we go to the AAC is unfounded...from an attendance perspective at least.
4) The best year for attendance during the Monken era was 2016. Home slate that year was Rice, Lafayette, North Texas, Air Force and Morgan State. That's 2 FCS teams, 2 AAC teams and AF. That can be replicated in the AAC.
5) Air Force is our best opponent for packing the stands. Over that time period attendance averaged 38,850 for the AF games. After AF, P5 opponents are best at packing the stands: 36,249 average. Other conference averages: MWC (33,240), CUSA (31,144), AAC (30,757), MAC (30,665), FCS (28,755), Independents (28,235) and finally Sun Belt (27,584). The AAC holds it's own. The MWC stat may be misleading because it is a small sample size with 1 SJSU and 1 Hawaii game in that stat (I treated AF separately).
6) I also looked at all the "regional" opponents as a category. During this time period, that list included games against: BC, Rutgers, Buffalo, Stony Brook, Temple, Fordham, Villanova, UMASS, UCONN, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Bucknell and Colgate. Average attendance for these games was 29,923. There have been som very well attended regional opponent games and some that weren't.
7) Top 10 games for attendance during that time period were: AF 2014 (40,749...the only game over 40k in attendance from 2012-2023); Duke 2015 (39,712); Stanford 2013 (39,644); BC 2012 (39.492); Duke 2017 (38,851); AF 2018 (38,502); AF 2016 (38,443); Lafayette 2016 (38,394); Wake Forest 2021 (38,109); Tulane 2019 (38,019). The last 3 AF home games other than the 2020 COVID game are in the top 10. The 2 nationally ranked teams Army has played at home (Stanford #5 and WF #16) are in this list. Duke made it twice, BC once and our future AAC opponent Tulane cracked the list.

My big take-aways:

1) Attendance has been generally decreasing despite the success Monken has brought. We're still not back to pre-COVID numbers but trending up.
2) We're not leaving behind a scheduling "plan" that was packing Michie stadium by going to the AAC. Overall the AAC opponents have help there own when it comes to attendance compared to many.
3) Quit playing the AF game away from Michie! They are the best draw to put fans in the stands.
4) There's definitely a P5 factor...when we play a P5 opponent it also puts fans in the stands. We need to be smart in the scheduling to get home-home contracts so we can host a P5 team at least every other year.

[ARMORMAN]

Revealing and useful analysis gabn; pop it up.