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Men's Basketball
Fan Support for Buckeye Basketball; Terrific or Tepid?
By John Porentas

Some wise guy on the-Ozone forum last week tried to say that the Buckeye Nation does not support the Buckeye Men's basketball team the way it should.

The nerve. I mean the very NERVE. We're talking Buckeye Nation here; finest teams, finest facilities, finest fans.

The wise guy obviously did not know what he was talking about and was, of course, immediately called out. Ohio State, it was pointed out, ranks 14th in the nation in basketball attendance with a whopping 15,462 Buckeye Nation Butts (BNBs) in the seats on average. No matter how you slice it, that's a lot of BNBs.

Despite the obvious folly of his ways, the wise guy did in fact continue slicing it. One of the slices he threw out was this: if Duke had any kind of arena that matched the passion of Duke basketball fans, Ohio State would most likely be 15th in the nation in attendance, not 14th, and there a lot more examples of that dynamic that can be cited, he said.

More folly, of course, because the BNBs in the seats argument just has more clout. Hey, the NCAA says 15,462 BNBs in the seats. Who can argue with the NCAA where BNBs are concerned?

Apparently our wise guy, because he just wouldn't shut up about it. He generated as much board clutter as an announcement that that Jason Gwaltny was considering a commitment to the OSU football program so he could team in the OSU backfield with a surprise newcomer to the recruiting class, Buster Howe. That, my friends, is a sizeable piece of board clutter.

If there is one thing the-Ozone cannot condone, it is unresolved board clutter, especially where BNBs in the seats is concerned. The BNBs in the seats crowd shouted this clown down with the obvious fact that all that matters is the raw number, 15,462. The clown shouted back (much to his own personal embarrassment we might add, because who in their right mind with argue with raw numbers or even more stupidly with the raw nerves of the people who had become so offended by his obvious lunacy) that BNBs in the seats is fine, but that still leaves a lot of empty seats at games. That, the clown kept mindlessly repeating, is a travesty.

Sure, he is obviously a clown, but in the spirit of utter fairness (because above all else fairness is what the-Ozone Forum is about), the-Ozone has spent many tedious hours researching the issue in the hopes of A) resolving the unresolved board clutter and B) shedding some light on whether BNBs in seats is an adequate indicator of Buckeye Basketball fervor, or whether something else should be considered, like whether there were too many seats without BNBs in them when the OSU basketball team takes the floor, which is apparently what the fool was trying to say but never got around to actually saying it.

OK, "many tedious hours" was a bit of stretch. The magic of Google turned it into maybe an hour's work, but that's probably an hour more than you spent on this, or you would have stopped reading this drivel five minutes ago. What did we find out? Well, we found out that in 2009 the Buckeyes did indeed average the 14th largest home crowds in college basketball at 15,462 per game. We've listed the top 15 below, and just to humor the clown, we've also listed some data on the arenas in which the top 15 teams play. The list is in order of top raw average attendance. The source is NCAA.org.

	School	2009 Average Attendance	Arena	Arena Capacity Rank	Capacity	Average Fill Rate
1.	Kentucky	22,239	Rupp Arena	3	23,500	94.6 %
2.	Syracuse	21,044	Carrier Dome	1	33,000	63.7 %
3.	North Carolina	21,035	Dean Dome	5	21,750	96.7 %
4.	Tennessee	20,483	Thompson Boling Arena	2	24,525	83.5 %
5.	Louisville	19,397	Freedom Hall	14	18,865	102.8 %
6.	Wisconsin	17,230	Kohl Center	26	17,142	100.5 %
7.	Maryland	17,048	Comcast Center	21	17,950	95.0 %
8.	Memphis	16,933	Fedex Forum	18	18,400	92.0 %
9.	Kansas	16,350	Allen Field House	29	16,300	100.3 %
10.	Marquette	16,200	Bradley Center	15	18,717	86.6 %
11.	Arkansas	16,043	Bud Walton Arena	12	19,200	83.6 %
12.	Creighton	15,930	Qwest Center	(arena not ranked)	17,272	92.2 %
13.	Illinois	15,499	Assembly Hall	27	16,450	94.2 %
14.	Ohio State	15,462	Value City Arena	11	19,500	79.3 %
15.	Michigan State	14,762	Breslin Center	39	14,992	98.5 %

And just to placate the clown, we rearranged the data in descending order of fill rate, which is another way of saying where the most empty seats are among the top-drawing programs.

	School	2009 Average Attendance	Arena	Arena Rank	Capacity	Average Fill Rate
2.	Syracuse	21,044	Carrier Dome	1	33,000	63.7 %
14.	Ohio State	15,462	Value City Arena	11	19,500	79.3 %
4.	Tennessee	20,483	Thompson Boling Arena	2	24,525	83.5 %
11.	Arkansas	16,043	Bud Walton Arena	12	19,200	83.6 %
10.	Marquette	16,200	Bradley Center	15	18,717	86.6 %
8.	Memphis	16,933	Fedex Forum	18	18,400	92.0 %
12.	Creighton	15,930	Qwest Center	(Arena not ranked)	17,272	92.2 %
13.	Illinois	15,499	Assembly Hall	27	16,450	94.2 %
1.	Kentucky	22,239	Rupp Arena	3	23,500	94.6 %
7.	Maryland	17,048	Comcast Center	21	17,950	95.0 %
3.	N. Carolina	21,035	Dean Dome	5	21,750	96.7 %
15.	Michigan State	14,762	Breslin Center	39	14,992	98.5 %
9.	Kansas	16,350	Allen Field House	29	16,300	100.3 %
6.	Wisconsin	17,230	Kohl Center	26	17,142	100.5 %
5.	Louisville	19,397	Freedom Hall	14	18,865	102.8 %

Obviously, somebody at Syracuse made a colossal error in estimating how many ONBs (Orangeman Nation Butts) would be in seats when the 'Cuse takes the court, because they have the daunting task of filling a football stadium for basketball. Sure, there are a lot of emptys at Syracuse, but 33,000, c'mon, we can excuse a few empties there.

The rest, however, is a different story. Where there are something approaching reasonably sized arenas, 10 of the remaining 14 schools use 92 or more percent of their seating capacity on average. On most college testing scales, that kind of percentage earns an A, and we agree here. That is inarguably great fan support. Three more are at 83.5 percent or better, also good, in the B range in most collegiate evaluations. Just one of the remaining 14 fills less than 80 percent of the seats on average, a C most the time at most universities.

Our board clown made some statements that riled some people up, but some of the things he said are beyond dispute. This is an entertaining and fun Buckeye team to watch that is doing a lot more winning than losing. They play hard at both ends of the court, are undefeated at home, and are in the thick of the Big Ten race. They feature the best player in the conference who is perhaps the best player in the nation. He is a true student-athlete who is unselfish and came back quickly from a broken back to help his team rather than put his NBA career prospects ahead of team prospects.

The clown on the message board pointed all that out and claimed there are a lot of good reasons to see this team and lend them your support, that the product on the floor is much more than a C product that has earned better than C support.

Ha, ha. What a clown.

Same Stats, some other schools of interest:

	School	2009 Average Attendance	Arena	Arena Rank	Capacity	Average Fill Rate
20.	Texas	13,616	Frank Erwin Center	28	16,331	83.4 %
23.	Minnesota	13,400	Williams Arena	41	14,625	91.6 %
34.	Iowa	10,861	Carver Hawkeye Arena	32	15,500	70.1 %
35.	Michigan	10,568	Chrisler Arena	49	13,751	76.8 %
36.	West Virginia	10,558	West Virginia Coliseum	48	14,029	75.3 %
38.	Florida	10,327	Stephen C. O'Connel Center		12,000 *	86.1 %
50	Notre Dame	9,428	Purcell Pavillion		11,418	82.6 %
54.	Duke	9,314	Cameron Indoor Stadium		9,314	100 %
66.	Penn State	8,020	Bryce-Jordan Arena	34	15,261	52.6 %

* Record crowd of 12,621 fans turned out to see the Gators defeat Ohio State on Dec. 23, 2006 in what would be a preview of the national title game.

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