Shorthair13 wrote:YT...I'm not "generally speaking". Go to a James Madison game or for that matter at Citadal and tell me how the FCS lacks enthusiasm!! There are a lot of FSC programs around the country that don't lack enthusiasm!! Not to mention we are a top 5 program in the country at the present time. So by your anaylasis the stadium should of been packed and rocking. Just because we are a smaller program in the FSC isn't an excuse not to "Cheer" for your team. I've been to HS football games that have more excitement than a home game at Gibbs Stadium. And if you think the players don't see it and feel the same way you're mistaken. This isn't an issue where we crunch #'s or use analytics or talk in general terms. I stand up the majority of the game and always during a critical time. So if you want to follow my lead I won't be hard to find...just look in section H3 or H4 and you will see me. Heck you'll probably see me waving my hands encouraging other fans to do the same.
Your sample is bad here. James Madison is a perennial power in the FCS with more students than we have living alumni. They are also the defending national champions. The Citadel has not always been the best atmosphere attendance-wise. They've been better than us, but Charleston is a bigger city than Spartanburg. There's a lot of factors that go into having a strong base of fans (success, competing interest, size of your city and school, etc etc.)
At Wofford we have success, but when it comes to competing interest, we're low priority for the public in Spartanburg and SC. Most alumni and students I know will pay attention and get passionate about Wofford football/basketball if they know they are doing good, but it's not the highest priority for many people. It's not that we have some deficit of enthusiasm relative to other programs, it's quite literally because we are smaller than them.
Meanwhile, if you go to conferences like the MVFC a lot of times they have good following because their FCS teams are the equivalent of their FBS teams and there's no pro teams. They also have more students.
Still, the perennial "problem" in all of the FCS is attendance and enthusiasm. We fill our small stadium about 1/2 its capacity and we're better than many many FCS teams. If you tune into any FCS game that isn't a perennial power, you'll see lots of stadium 3/4 empty. I'd love to see the statistics for the size of the average stadium compared with average attendance.
I'd love to see us do better and cheer louder and all of that good stuff (when I was at Wofford at times I felt like I was the only one who cared about the team, Greek Life is king there), but I've learned it's better to just cheer yourself and recognize it's not a Wofford problem, it's an FCS problem, and really a problem for every team that isn't power 5.