Unseen and UnHURD: Student attendance hit new lows in 2017-18
Sparse moments of exhilaration dotted the Aggie men’s basketball team’s 2017-18 campaign like the occasional lightning bolt in a dull thunderstorm.
One of those bolts was Koby McEwen’s performance against New Mexico in Logan on the last day of January when he scored a career-high with 31 points on 75 percent shooting, and grabbing 13 rebounds en route to an 89-80 victory.
It was the first real high point for the Aggies during the season, yet so few were there to see it. During and after the game, pictures began surfacing on Twitter that exposed an overabundance of bare seats in the student section and all over the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
The USU HURD, a nationally-recognized student section, drew the ire of plenty of Twitter fans because of those photos, and it wasn’t the first time the student section stretched just a few rows deep. The HURD is not just having a bad year, it’s having its worst year in recent memory.
Data gathered from the USU Card Office — which is able to measure student attendance at the games unofficially through a count of student ID cards scanned for entry at the doors — shows the average student attendance during conference home games is at its lowest of the decade, and it’s not close.
For the first time since the early Stew Morrill era, student average conference attendance dropped below 1,000 per home game. Not once during conference play did the proud HURD fill even half of their Spectrum seats, the data shows, with their best turnout being 1,913 against Colorado State, an 84-75 USU loss.
The Spectrum, notorious for its raucous crowds and in-your-face courtside hecklers, seats 10,270 fans at full capacity, with plenty of standing room for when a certain group of Cougars come to town. In that January contest against the Lobos, when the Aggies pulled off an unlikely upset in thrilling fashion, less than 6,500 seats were filled. Even worse, of the 4,000 seats allotted to USU students, free of charge no less, the data showed the number of students at the game to be 865, less than a quarter full.
Even some of the higher ups of the HURD were fairly unaware of how dire the situation had become. USU HURD President Josh Segobia got a look at the numbers, and it was a game-changer for him.
“That is really interesting to see,” Segobia said. “I had no idea honestly…this changes a lot and I definitely have a lot more to think about now and try and figure out what the possibilities are for those numbers.”
When Duryea was “relieved” last week of his coaching duties, the number of season ticket holders and regular season ticket purchases, which is down approximately 35 percent over the last four years alone, “was a factor,” Athletic Director John Hartwell said. So was the dearth of the HURD. To Hartwell, the student attendance brings just as much to the fanbase despite not being a source of revenue.
“The [factor] everybody drills down on is wins and losses, which is obviously important, and that is a bottom line judge,” Hartwell said. “Both the student and our season ticket holders…is down. That’s significant.”
For Segobia, one of the reasons he thinks student attendance is down is because other events have diverted would-be game-goers to seek different entertainment.
“I think it’s just that every school has their good and bad games,” Segobia said. “We’re not gonna have a great attendance to every single game, y’know, it’s just one of those things that happens, but I think it’s just that the students just want a good time.”
The Aggies’ home battle royale against BYU in December was the ultimate “good time.” Fans packed the arena (the only Spectrum sellout of the year), blackout was the theme, and the tumult of the Cougars’ own program set the stage for a nutritious helping of HURD-style terrorism. There was one problem: USU lost that game 75-66 thanks to a free-throw shooting effort that could have been bested by Mount Logan Middle School.
In the HURD’s top three most attended games of the overall season, the Aggies went 1-2, a problem not commonly seen in the teams of the old Western Athletic Conference days, when Utah State boasted 30-win seasons and the fans were always there. Always.
The trouble is that the lack of enthusiasm from current Aggies doesn’t boil down to any one thing. Many avid USU fans have assumed it to be to tied to the downtrend in overall wins per year. Yet the HURD actually was on a downtrend that started even before, and continued during, the days of players like All-Americans Gary Wilkinson and Tai Wesley. The trend has gone on for years, albeit there was a short bump in attendance the year that USU was a flashy new addition to the MWC.
It’s certainly not the excitement of opponents. The Aggies have undeniably faced better competition, fiercer competition, since joining the MWC. Most of USU’s WAC slate from year to year consisted of games that were foregone conclusions.
Bad weather? Welcome to Logan.
One correlation exists: Duryea.
The former head coach saw a average drop of 200 HURD members per game upon taking the reins from the former Utah State basketball deity Morrill.
“Stew was a great part of this program, and meant a lot to everyone,” Segobia said. “The community, the school, y’know, everything. He left his mark for sure, and that’s a huge footstep to follow in.”
Duryea was no Stew, and the fans let him know game after game after game, but he had weapons on his teams just like his predecessor did.
“I think we get caught in this pattern of comparing ourselves to everything,” Segobia said. “We could make all the comparisons we want in the world to ‘back in the day.’ That was a great time, and we had that time; we had Stew, we had some all-stars on that team. We’ve got some all-stars now. It’s just a matter of utilizing it and making people be able to see that.”
Some hope could shine through in the wake of events in Aggie hoops. For one, the morale of the fanbase in the midst of repetitive mediocrity could certainly see a break in the clouds when Hartwell inevitably brings in a new coach, a new face to sell tickets and hype up the faithful.
As well, the average overall attendance at the Spectrum, which correlates positively with the HURD’s for the most part, made a small bump from 6,720 in the 2016-17 season to 6,857 this past go-around. It isn’t much, but it could make a ripple.
Until then, the Aggie faithful sit by and swallow reality. The Spectrum isn’t quite as “magic” as we all remember.
@snowmatt1417