Firstly, I want to congratulate Heather Lyke on landing Jeff Capel. It was a great hire and hope it works out.
Though she will get an extended honeymoon because of this hire, it doesn't remove the biggest problem which is drawing people to Heinz which ultimately affects recruiting. As I've said multiple times, the Steelers relationship with Pitt is useless because look at how many 4/5 star recruits we've landed the last two years after beating PSU at home and the National champs in Death Valley. The Steelers don't move the bar because we can go through countless 4/5 star PA players who went elsewhere who likely grew up Steeler fans and serious doubt they rooted for the Browns.
My biggest issue besides landing an on campus stadium is we need to come up with a business plan to sell tickets and it shouldn't be around this year's PSU night game. We all remember when Scott Barnes was bragging about the record season tickets and outside of the PSU game, Heinz was a morgue for the rest of the games. What's not a joke is the amount of 4/5 star players who pass on us due to atmosphere when we are competing with PSU, OSU, UM, ND, etc. for elite playmakers who help compete for championships. What's not a joke is when ESPN mocks the Heinz atmosphere on National TV which sucks for recruiting.
Last season, Lyke introduced football promos a week before the season started? Are you serious? Most organizations do this when the schedule is released. I've said on multiple occasions to make the upper deck corners or highest seats (worst seats), $1 for the unattractive games or put all of them on stub hub which is how today's consumer purchases tickets. Tickets aren't sold through the ticket office which is the way people bought 30 years ago. It really doesn't matter if the tickets are $.25, get people in the building and hopefully they will come back especially the younger kids.
We also saw earlier this year that when you market a game, people will show. Case in point, Lyke did a nice job in getting 10,000 people to a ladies game and can't remember the reason for the event. No disrespect, but men's BB always draws better than ladies BB. Men's BB averaged 2000 to 3000 a game but the women's team got 10,000 people for one game? Its called marketing and if a plan or team isn't doing well, you need to change to make things better. I'm sure there are plenty of kids or families who would have loved to go to a Pitt BB game regardless of how bad they were. Sadly, common business 101 has been lacking in the Pitt athletic department since SP. I get the sense that Pitt is never proactive but is always reactive which is a bad way to run your business. I'm curious what you think. H2P.
Though she will get an extended honeymoon because of this hire, it doesn't remove the biggest problem which is drawing people to Heinz which ultimately affects recruiting. As I've said multiple times, the Steelers relationship with Pitt is useless because look at how many 4/5 star recruits we've landed the last two years after beating PSU at home and the National champs in Death Valley. The Steelers don't move the bar because we can go through countless 4/5 star PA players who went elsewhere who likely grew up Steeler fans and serious doubt they rooted for the Browns.
My biggest issue besides landing an on campus stadium is we need to come up with a business plan to sell tickets and it shouldn't be around this year's PSU night game. We all remember when Scott Barnes was bragging about the record season tickets and outside of the PSU game, Heinz was a morgue for the rest of the games. What's not a joke is the amount of 4/5 star players who pass on us due to atmosphere when we are competing with PSU, OSU, UM, ND, etc. for elite playmakers who help compete for championships. What's not a joke is when ESPN mocks the Heinz atmosphere on National TV which sucks for recruiting.
Last season, Lyke introduced football promos a week before the season started? Are you serious? Most organizations do this when the schedule is released. I've said on multiple occasions to make the upper deck corners or highest seats (worst seats), $1 for the unattractive games or put all of them on stub hub which is how today's consumer purchases tickets. Tickets aren't sold through the ticket office which is the way people bought 30 years ago. It really doesn't matter if the tickets are $.25, get people in the building and hopefully they will come back especially the younger kids.
We also saw earlier this year that when you market a game, people will show. Case in point, Lyke did a nice job in getting 10,000 people to a ladies game and can't remember the reason for the event. No disrespect, but men's BB always draws better than ladies BB. Men's BB averaged 2000 to 3000 a game but the women's team got 10,000 people for one game? Its called marketing and if a plan or team isn't doing well, you need to change to make things better. I'm sure there are plenty of kids or families who would have loved to go to a Pitt BB game regardless of how bad they were. Sadly, common business 101 has been lacking in the Pitt athletic department since SP. I get the sense that Pitt is never proactive but is always reactive which is a bad way to run your business. I'm curious what you think. H2P.