Winning solves everything for a football team, or at least takes everyone’s eyes off any problems.
But for programs like NIU, winning every game is an unrealistic expectation. Even during the Huskies’ best performances over the past three decades, they have not produced an undefeated season.

This means there are multiple problems NIU will have to address where the solution cannot simply be winning. One such problem: attendance.

The Huskies are averaging 16,376 fans per home game. While that figure is disturbing, it’s not what’s causing nightmares.

The true concern is the trend of fans per game. As NIU keeps winning, fewer fans show up.
NIU started the season with 21,427 fans against Western Illinois. The Huskies had only 16,320 spectators against Idaho after a victory against Purdue.

Homecoming usually brings larger crowds. For example, in the 2007 season, 23,057 fans attended the game. That was a 30 percent increase over the 2007 season average.

This year, however, only 17,608 fans came to homecoming. That’s an increase of only 7.5 percent.

And then there’s Saturday’s whopping attendance of 10,148 fans.

While some of the blame can be put on the economy, they have no explanation for the student section only having about 2,000 fans.

And the Huskies can’t explain the poor attendance by not winning either. NIU won just as many games thus far into the 2008 system as they have this year. In that eighth game last year, a home game, the Huskies had 17,163 fans.

So what’s the culprit? What has changed so much in just a year?

It’s all about the time of the game.

Huskie head coach Jerry Kill said he is “a traditional type of dude.” Translation: He likes high school football on Friday, college on Saturday and professional on Sunday. But the true traditional dude also cares about when those games are played. This helps to explain Saturday’s folly.

The MAC has played seven games at 11 a.m. on Saturday. Four of these have produced a higher attendance than those teams’ averages at home.

But of these four, three are outliers that must be removed.

These games are Buffalo vs. Pittsburgh, Toledo vs. Ohio State and Central Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan. The first two games must be discounted because they put a MAC team against a team from a larger conference. The CMU game needs to be removed because it was the Chippewas homecoming game.

Thus, after this, we are left with four games, three which produced drastically lower attendance numbers.

Temple had 3,402 less fans at its 11 a.m. game. Bowling Green saw a drop of 5,214 spectators when it hosted the ESPN Plus contest. And NIU got the real treat on Halloween, when it was off by 6,228 fans from its season average.

Thus, the Huskies are not alone in their problem. In fact, it’s not just a MAC problem; other programs, like Northwestern have struggled to fill seats. Seven of the nine games for the Wildcats have been played at 11 a.m.

So why all the 11 a.m. starts? TV networks like ESPN, The Big Ten Network and regional sporting channels want to fill their Saturday programming with nothing but live football.

While this may be great for the fan at home, it has disastrous effects on attendance.

This isn’t the only explanation for what is happening, but it is a major part.

With NIU finishing its home schedule with two Thursday games so ESPN can show an empty stadium instead of some repeat of SportsCenter, we can only wonder what hit attendance will now take.

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