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My reasoning on why UCA and ASU would be playing a series and NOT just in jonesboro only.

go stAte worte: "Our two most recent games in LR drew double the capacity of Estes Stadium with opponents that aren't of much interest in Central Arkansas.
Even moving to Little Rock would be problematic. Overhead costs would require selling about 5,000 more tickets in LR than Jonesboro just to get to the same revenue level."

My opinion would be that a game in LR would draw whatever ASU's last 2 games in LR did and much more because the game WOULD have the interest of Central Arkansas as a whole with it being UCA-ASU. I believe that the last 2 games in Jonesboro with UCA were, or close to, sell outs. And a game in LR would draw those football fans out there who were neutral but not wanting to drive to Jonesboro to watch the game. [i]Especially if the Hogs were on an offweek or out of town playing someone.[/i] I call it a conviencence factor for those. And as for the overhead costs, those would be taken on by UCA since it would be considered a Bears' home game, so ASU would only have to worry about travel of their players,staff, est.

A Jonesboro only series makes no sense whatsoever for UCA, unless ASU was going to give UCA the money in one of the games, highly doubtful that would ever happen we can all agree on that one. We can also agree that no game will take place in Conway until a few more stands are added somewhere. Common sense there as well. However I don't get the arguement that LR wuold not be a viable location for that game. Maybe a 2 for 1 with 2 games in Jonesboro and 1 game in LR counting as the UCA home game seems much more likely a scenario to happen.

The series will have to start and have some hard numbers before ASU will consider playing in LR.

You say there is no benefit to playing in Jonesboro, I'm afraid you are missing the basics of the scenario.

In the last seven years there have only been four games where a I-A traveled to a I-AA and all four involved Idaho who only has 17,000 seats at their campus facility, they have to pay something around $50,000 to rent the other facility so going on the road made sense.

Arkansas State has no trouble finding I-AA's willing to travel to Jonesboro for $75,000 to $85,000 including some that have had to fly.

SEMO came in for $85,000 and we drew just over 21,000 with rain moving in. That's a decent home payday. ASU would pay UCA $100,000 to maybe as much as $120,000 for a game in hopes of drawing a bigger crowd. If UCA says "No" what are your choices? Drive the same distance to Louisiana Monroe for the same money? Drive further to North Texas or UL Lafayette for the money? You can go Iowa State for $250,000 or hope to luck into a deal like Appy got with LSU for $400,000 but there is a cost involved in dimishing your probability of success, big checks come with a price.

ASU is very interested in playing UCA, I know that for a fact, but not so interested as to make a deal that does not make financial sense.

we will see I guess

I believe that the last 2 games in Jonesboro with UCA were crowds of about 25,000, about 80 percent of capacity. I wouldn't categorize that as a near sell-out.

I thought they were, that is why I put that in there, that and by looking at the crowd and seat space remaining as well. Does ASU count actual tickets sold or actual people in the seats for attendance records? what is the largest crowd in ASU history, I know at one time it was the UCA game but I figured that one would have been eclipsed by now.

That was the Barry Dowd era. The attendance count likely as not involved him putting down his popcorn long enough to look up and say the first number that came into his head.

Later attempts to verify the count were uh interesting to say the least. They only found records of 15,000 tickets being sold. That doesn't give us a clue about ASU students in attendance since they don't have to have a ticket. There were possibly a number of tickets sold through the Sonic promotion that did not get logged (ie. they took them dropped them off, brought the check back and depositied it but no one bothered to log them since they didn't leave the office the normal way). There were lots of comp tickets issued, every legislator and elected official was given a bunch to hand out, we have no idea how many were used.

This is the same AD who announced record year for Indian Club membership growth that was discovered via audit to be one of the smallest.

You might be suprised he was invited to leave ASU before his contract expired

Today we use clickers to count the number of people entering to get the actual count. Student ID's are scanned to get their count. Tickets are printed by computer so they are logged electronically and comps are flagged in order to get the paid count. Then all of that has to be matched against deposits to verify sales and the records retained for either four or five years to be available for inspection by the NCAA.

that's all great and good, but I really just wanted to know what the largest crowd was in ASU history. Because at one time it was one ofthe UCA games, but as I stated earlier, I thought it would have surely been eclipsed by now. The rest of your information was good and all, but not really needed.

29,465 (Sept. 13, 1997) vs. Central Arkansas I found that somewhere, so I'll stick with that until further notice

30,427 against Memphis which is reliable.

Having attended both games, that count for the 1997 game is inflated by at least 5,000 and the other information was needed to illustrate the fact that pre-1999 numbers are wildly unreliable.

I just really wanted the number. Thanks

Gosh, I wish the series could resume now.

It should be fun when it starts back up.

Burly Bear