ARK Baseball team sets NCAA record for attendance...

[Dossenator]

The Razorback Baseball Team has set the NCAA record for average attendance to games over an entire season. They averaged over 8,000 fans a game over the 2007 season. No team has ever averaged over 8,000 fans a game until now. The Hogs had 8 of the top 10 attendance games in the SEC this year. They had over 10,000 fans a few games. Here is the story.

http://www.hogwired.com/ViewArticle.dbm ... LID=898576

Top Ten SEC Games this year for attendance (tickets sold):
TEAM GAME TOTAL TICKETS SOLD
May 5 LSU at Arkansas 10,727
May 4 LSU at Arkansas 10,399
March 31 Kentucky at Mississippi State 10,324
May 18 Ole Miss at Arkansas 10,031
May 19 Ole Miss at Arkansas 9,733
May 6 LSU at Arkansas 9,438
March 24 Vanderbilt at Arkansas 9,326
March 25 Vanderbilt at Arkansas 9,216
May 17 Ole Miss at Arkansas 8,657
Feb. 27 Tulane at LSU 8,577

SEC Baseball attendance:
SEC ATTENDANCE FOR 2007

[Eric]

That's a lot for baseball

[Eric]

Speaking of that, why isn't college baseball more popular?

I mean, isn't the MLB more popular than the NBA? You'd think that, generally, people in the USA like baseball more than basketball. Yet college basketball is way more popular than college baseball. College lacrosse probably gets higher ratings than baseball for some reason

[Dossenator]

Not sure why college baseball is not bigger nation wide.

Baseball has always been big in Arkansas. Even in years when they are not very good the attendance is above most programs. The University of Arkansas truly does support their sports programs. There may be better baskeball schools, or better football schools, etc....but Ark has the whole package. The facilities across the board are incredible for every sport....the track facilties are second to none, the baseball field in a list last year was ranked #2 in the nation before their latest uprgrades, the basketball arena is top 5 in the country, and the football stadium does not seat as many as some but I will still put it top 10-15 in the nation. And they fill the stadiums up.

To see a slide show of the Razorback Baseball stadium and facilites visit this link....

http://www.razorbackfacilities.com/sport03.htm

The Razorbacks sold 233,350 tickets this season in baseball. LSU sold more tickets but played 6 more home games then Ark. Look at how poorly teams like Tenn, Georgia, Vanderbilt and others did....only averaging a little over 1,700 per game.

Here is how the SEC attendance looked like for 2007 (the SEC sold over 1.5 million tickets for the season):

SEC ATTENDANCE FOR 2007

TEAM GAMES OVERALL TICKETS SOLD AVERAGE
Arkansas 29 233,350 8,047

LSU 35 256,537 7,329

Miss St. 30 191,103 6,370

S. Car 29 145,667 5,023

Ole Miss 32 153,069 4,783

Alabama 35 156,379 4,467

Florida 33 106,956 3,241

Auburn 35 89,732 2,563

Kentucky 34 70,001 2,058

Vanderbilt 32 59,720 1,866

Georgia 35 61,491 1,756

Tennessee 35 60,438 1,726

TOTALS 394 1,575,873 4,000

[Dossenator]

Rolltide...I agree. I think regionally they are going to carry the SEC Tournament on TV. Am I mistaken? I live in California so it will not be on out here.

Also, Ark and Bama play each other in the opening round.

[Dossenator]

I wish I could have watched the game. Schmidt pitched a good game against bama...a complete game shutout and won the game 5-0. But that performance was out done last night by Ark pitcher J. Todd against the Gamecocks. He struck out the first 9 Gamecocks swinging and pitched 8 inning of shutout baseball with a SEC tournament record 17 strikeouts. The Hogs won that game 6-0.

Hogs are looking good right now. They were ranked top 10 all season until the last 6 games. They faltered at the end to drop to #15. I believe they have the team that can win it all this year. The pitching staff is really good and can be dominating at times.....

[Eric]

Hey, Doss, what happened the Razorbacks? I flip the channel from the Stanley Cup to check on the score on CSTV and its 8-1. Now, it's 14-3.

That's a shocker. I didn't see that one coming

[Dossenator]

Man, I am not sure what happened yesterday. Jess Todd, one of the best pitchers in the country (just named to the second team all-american list) was just horrible. OK State has his number.

Todd had been brilliant in his six previous starts. Here is his numbers over that span:

He struck out a school and SEC Tournament record 17 batters en route to his ninth win of the season vs. the Gamecocks in the SEC tournament. He allowed just two singles over eight innings, while lowering his ERA to 2.49.
Todd has not allowed an earned run in his last 12 innings of work, and has allowed just one earned run over his last 21 innings. He is 5-0 over his last six starts with an impressive 0.91 ERA and 64 strikeouts in 49.2 innings of work.
It is Todd’s first national player of the week honor this season. He was named the SEC Pitcher of the Week following his two wins over No. 1 Vanderbilt in late March.

The above information is from Hogwired.com (UofA official website).

The Hogs are not out of it yet. They play Creighton early this afternoon. The winner of that game gets a crack at OK State. The one plus is that the game is in Fayetteville. The crowds will be big and loud. Hopefully they can pull off a couple of wins today. They get a national seed of #7....they get to host a first round regional....and if they can somehow pull off winning this regional they will get to host the next round as well.

I was shocked too to say the least. Not them lossing (Ok State is #21 and has vertially the same record as Ark) but how they lost.