I'm sad as a Panther fan...

[SRT4driver]

Our school's most successful program (men's soccer), with our school's best home record & home-field advantage in any sport, plays an important conference home match against Butler on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and only 313 people show up?

They finished tied after two sudden-death OT's, 2-2. To put it mildly, the soccer team really needed this win. Now they're 1-2-1 with only three HL matches left (all but 1 at home).

And here I am wishing I could be there to go to the three remaining home matches... looks like I'm just about the only one wanting to do that. I realize I'm preaching to the choir for the most part on here, but I'm still pretty depressed by this.

What really irks me is that the attendance #, the lowest of the season by 100 people, was LESS THAN HALF of last season's AVERAGE of 727! That # put us at 37th in the nation last year. This year looked to be a lock for moving into the Top 25 attendance-wise after getting over 1,200 for the season opener and 3,256 for Marquette, but the avg has been plummetting ever since, and is down to around 1,000 now. Last year averaging 1,002 fans was good for 21st in the country. www.ncaa.org/stats/m_soccer/1/attendance/index.html

In case any one is wondering, there's three home matches left, including hosting Michigan of the Big Ten Conference next this Friday night @7:00pm. uwmpanthers.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/sched/wiml-m-soccer-sched.html

[JimmyLemke]

I wish that lazy ass students who have nothing to do would show up and watch an entertaining game.

I've been to every game this season at home, and I think it sucks that more students don't embrace UWM soccer.

[uwmfutbol]

Yeah I have to work sundays unfortunately... I'll be at the UWGB game though.

The problem is that unless the game is important or hyped, no one cares about soccer.

You also gotta keep in mind that Packer/NFL games destroy attendance.

[Kroener3535]

Well I would argue that people weren't doing anything. The Packers were playing and that is a tough thing to beat out even though it was on television. Also, there are people who care about the athletics program here but just find soccer boring, and this guy is one of them. There are alot of students who grew up in rural Wisconsin where their schools did not have a soccer program and just never developed an interest for it. I mean soccer to me is just so damn boring, maybe if I tried to embrace it and follow it I would go to matchs but honestly its not keeping me up at nights that I have never been to a soccer game...

[SRT4driver]

I think it's more about supporting your school's 2nd biggest athletic team, that happens to traditionally be its most successful program, both in our league and nationally.
And I've never played a minute of soccer in my life, and had never been to a soccer match in my life before my first Milwaukee Panther one.

[newbee]

We have championship teams in WSoc, WBB and volleyball that no one cares about either. . .we have to face that we have a ton of fairweather fans for those sports and a bunch of one-sport fans besides that (that said, if MBB loses, undoubtedly attendance would drop there too I'm sure). We are a small minority of people who support the entire athletic program regardless of sport or result and always will be.

[uwmfutbol]

Football and basketball are the two big sports in this country... college baseball isn't as popular in the midwest. Even then, the teams have to be competitive for the most part to keep fan support.

[mwu]

baseball is fun to play, incredably boring to watch, so much down time! thats why i've never been big on that. soccer is like hockey continuous action, minus the heavy hitting. the easiest way to start embracing soccer is watching the world cup, if you missed those games, well then i guess you're out of luck until 2010. if you have the ability to order fox soccer channel, thats the next best thing. my only beef with football is that there is too much down time between plays. i love it when teams go into the 2min. drill, back to back to back plays. back to the topic...... sunday afternoon games suck they're so lathargic fans dont (i know i dont) have the same energy as for a night game.