First, we’ve seen first hand how aggy, Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, and Alabama travel to Austin. Won’t be surprised to see Florida, Georgia, Auburn, and Tennessee do the same, but this isn’t about getting opposing fans to visit, this is about getting our own fans to attend.
Many of us don’t live in Austin. A large contingent of our season ticket holders travel from DFW, Houston, and San Antonio for games. As someone who traveled to DKR from out of town for nearly a decade I can tell you that our Big 12 schedule was pretty much always trash but the #1 factor on whether I’d attend a game or not usually boiled down to the kickoff time or if it was a back to back weekend of home games
11am kicks against a mediocre opponent on a back to back weekend usually was not well attended.
Tech was our highest attended conference game in both 2015 and 2017; and our lowest in 2019. Let’s see if you can spot the pattern.
2015 Lowest attended conference games at DKR were Okie St (230 kick but we had just played Cal in DKR the week before) and K State (11am kick the week after OU). Highest attended games were Tech and Kansas, both Primetime kicks neither part of a back to back.
2017 is basically the same story:
Highest: Primetime non back to back games against Tech/Kansas
Lowest: K State (Primetime kick week directly before OU) and Okie St (11am kick the week directly after OU) thanks Big 12!
In 2019 when Tech was our lowest attended conference game, it was a 11am kick. Shocking!
If you remove outliers of the 2020 COVID year and an amazingly sparse game where we played K State the day after Thanksgiving in 2021 on the heels of a 6 game losing streak, our attendance between our best and worst game each year only fluctuates between 3-10k people.
We packed in 93,000 people to watch Louisiana Tech for fucks sake, bragging that Tech was our best “draw” only further emphasizes why we needed to make this move in the first place. Absent a horrific losing streak we still pack in 85-90k fans even with 11am kicks in back to back weeks with crap opponents.
So I will absolutely deny that Tech was our “best draw in Austin” because, if you noticed in those years I highlighted above, our second “best draw in Austin” those same years was fucking a absolute trash Kansas Jayhawks team that went 0-12 and 1-11 respectively proving that any fucking school with a pulse could show up at DKR with a prime time kick that’s not part of a back to back and be our “best draw in Austin”.
The arrogance of Tech thinking they are somehow special to Texas will never cease to amaze me.