UNH & CAA North Football Alive & Well!

[Wildcat80]

A new CAA record of almost 33,000 fans to see the Colonial Clash with UNH & Umass at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro confirms that the Northeast CAN support CAA football!!! Everyone attending is pumped to do it again next year. This should open up all sorts of possibilities at Gillette.....UNH vs UConn? UNH vs Army? Or if URI is paying attention either UNH or Umass vs an improved URI? Maybe even a well-travelled App State or Montana? I'm sure the rest of the supposedly more popular Caa south schools were very surprised to hear both the score & attendance. Congrats to all involved!!

[Uncle Buck]

Definitely a good time, but the have to add more people working the gates. Lines to get in before kickoff were long and a lot of pushing and shoving from college kids who don't know how to hold their alcohol. Then again, maybe the 32K that showed up were a lot more than expected. A great event that should definitely happen again next season.

[Big Al]

A new CAA record of almost 33,000 fans to see the Colonial Clash with UNH & Umass at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro confirms that the Northeast CAN support CAA football!!! Everyone attending is pumped to do it again next year. This should open up all sorts of possibilities at Gillette.....UNH vs UConn? UNH vs Army? Or if URI is paying attention either UNH or Umass vs an improved URI? Maybe even a well-travelled App State or Montana? I'm sure the rest of the supposedly more popular Caa south schools were very surprised to hear both the score & attendance. Congrats to all involved!!

Wow. Makes you wonder how UNH's attendance would fare with a real stadium.

Also, I like the idea of making an HBCU-style classic game.

[UNHWildCats]

Well my guess is the schools got probably 100% or close to that of the gate and the Patriots got the concession profits. Even if the Patriots got a cut of the gate thats still a low college ticket price so they likely didnt wanna end up at a loss by having too much staff on hand. Im sure they will look at what they made this year and make adjustments to add more staff next year if they can without burning into their profit too much.

Going forward I would like to see a second game added and make it a doubleheader, charge a bit more for tickets and let the tickets be good for both games... leave a couple hours between games so the fans can do some tailgating between games. Start the first at 12ish and the second at 6ish... they can sell the place out if they got the right teams. Then split the gate evenly between the 4 schools.

Charge $45 for a ticket, that gets you two games. If the place sells out each team gets $765,000 that would greatly benefit the schools and their athletic budgets.

While I dont know the breakdown of ticket sales between on campus student sales and boxoffice sales, ticket revenue from this weekends game was atleast $500,000 if we assume 20,000 of the tickets were sold by the boxoffice.

Theres money to be made here, and atleast until UNH gets a new stadium, and maybe even after that, they need to seriously consider having their UMass home game there every season, atleast until they see if the novelty of it wares off... but if they can maintain that attendance number every two years, no reason for UNH to not keep going there.

[theUofNH09]

It was good to see most fans get into the game for kickoff or close to it. Both schools student bodies are used to tailgating then heading back to campus to party.

[Anovafan]

Looked great on tv, I was really impressed with the turnout. It was actually a really good game into the 3rd quarter, despite the final score. I thought it looked much better than the W&M/UD game just before it. There is something about a pro stadium that makes it look better on tv, even if it is only about 1/2 full.

[Wildcat80]

Nix the doubleheader...too much traffic....I would not stay that long for a 2nd game....this was PERFECT....no need to do anything other than keep promoting it.

[yorkcountyUNHfan]

Well my guess is the schools got probably 100% or close to that of the gate and the Patriots got the concession profits. Even if the Patriots got a cut of the gate thats still a low college ticket price so they likely didnt wanna end up at a loss by having too much staff on hand. Im sure they will look at what they made this year and make adjustments to add more staff next year if they can without burning into their profit too much.

Going forward I would like to see a second game added and make it a doubleheader, charge a bit more for tickets and let the tickets be good for both games... leave a couple hours between games so the fans can do some tailgating between games. Start the first at 12ish and the second at 6ish... they can sell the place out if they got the right teams. Then split the gate evenly between the 4 schools.

Charge $45 for a ticket, that gets you two games. If the place sells out each team gets $765,000 that would greatly benefit the schools and their athletic budgets.

While I dont know the breakdown of ticket sales between on campus student sales and boxoffice sales, ticket revenue from this weekends game was atleast $500,000 if we assume 20,000 of the tickets were sold by the boxoffice.

Theres money to be made here, and atleast until UNH gets a new stadium, and maybe even after that, they need to seriously consider having their UMass home game there every season, atleast until they see if the novelty of it wares off... but if they can maintain that attendance number every two years, no reason for UNH to not keep going there.

I read somewhere (I'll try to fined a link) that as the home team UNH got a $86,000 guarantee.That was likely based on 25,000+/-. I'm not sure what the final payout will be.

As far as BC and UConn go they were the first choice, but neither wanted to give up a home game.

I think both schools were very happy with how everything went. I'm sure both would be interested in extending the contract.

Found it...from the UMass web site
Because New Hampshire was scheduled to host UMass this year, the Wildcats will be the home team and receive a financial guarantee of $85,000 from Gillette Stadium according to McCutcheon. Next year, the Minutemen will be the home team and will receive the same compensation

[DrG]

I thought it was a great day (aside from the game, from my perspective), and I'm already looking forward to next year. Even though our stadium holds twice as many as UNH's, I would even be open to making it a permanent site for the UMass-UNH game (sort of an FCS version of Georgia-Florida or Texas-Oklahoma). I thought it was especially great that the attendance was almost as much as what BC drew for its home game vs. MD 25 miles away. However, it's unrealistic to expect that either school could ever play an FBS opponent at Gillette. The only reason the FBS schools (even Army) play FCS opponents is for the home game revenue and a guaranteed W (well, most of the time).

[BlueHenSinfonian]

Sounds like it was a big success all around. Delaware and Villanova should look into renting out the Linc to do something similar for the season closer next year.

[DrG]

UD-Nova at the Linc would be awesome! But as is the case with UNH-UMass, it would have to be a twofer to make it work. I'm sure Nova would do it in a nanosecond, but would UD be willing to give up a home game?

[Wildcat80]

UD-Nova at the Linc would be awesome! But as is the case with UNH-UMass, it would have to be a twofer to make it work. I'm sure Nova would do it in a nanosecond, but would UD be willing to give up a home game?

"Only" 32,193 watched temple-nova this year. would UDel draw more than FBS/MAC temple??

[BlueHenSinfonian]

"Only" 32,193 watched temple-nova this year. would UDel draw more than FBS/MAC temple??

Delaware has generally drawn more fans than Temple in recent history, and Newark is less than a 45 minute drive from Philly, so it's plausible.

[emilimo701]

Well my guess is the schools got probably 100% or close to that of the gate and the Patriots got the concession profits. Even if the Patriots got a cut of the gate thats still a low college ticket price so they likely didnt wanna end up at a loss by having too much staff on hand. Im sure they will look at what they made this year and make adjustments to add more staff next year if they can without burning into their profit too much.

Going forward I would like to see a second game added and make it a doubleheader, charge a bit more for tickets and let the tickets be good for both games... leave a couple hours between games so the fans can do some tailgating between games. Start the first at 12ish and the second at 6ish... they can sell the place out if they got the right teams. Then split the gate evenly between the 4 schools.

Charge $45 for a ticket, that gets you two games. If the place sells out each team gets $765,000 that would greatly benefit the schools and their athletic budgets.

While I dont know the breakdown of ticket sales between on campus student sales and boxoffice sales, ticket revenue from this weekends game was atleast $500,000 if we assume 20,000 of the tickets were sold by the boxoffice.

Theres money to be made here, and atleast until UNH gets a new stadium, and maybe even after that, they need to seriously consider having their UMass home game there every season, atleast until they see if the novelty of it wares off... but if they can maintain that attendance number every two years, no reason for UNH to not keep going there.

I read somewhere that UNH got a flat rate cut of $85,000

[Jackman]

They got a guarantee of $85,000, but I'm sure they received a cut of the ticket sales as well, as did UMass. Otherwise, they wouldn't have as much motivation to promote and sell more tickets, organize buses to transport students to the game, etc. The $85k was to offset what UNH would lose by giving up a home game, so that there wouldn't be any risk in moving the game to Gillette even if it flopped.