Would relocation of Rams open opportunity for SLU?

[Bobby Metzinger]

I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point about freeing up sports entertainment dollars, but your time frame is a little off here Roy. SLU jumped into the top 25 in attendance in 1994 (http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/Reports/attendanceYBYtop25.pdf). I'm assuming that is the 1993-94 season. SLU ranked 24 in 1994, 7th in 1995, 7th in 1996, 18th in 1997, 6th in 1998, 12th in 1999, 20th in 2000, 23rd in 2001, and fell out of the top 25 in 2002. The Rams came to St. Louis in 1995, so SLU was still packing in fans during the Rams first 6 years. Perhaps SLU had built themselves up enough that it took time for the generally poor showing early Rams teams to begin stealing entertainment $$ and then when the Rams were finally good after 1999 SLU's attendance began to fall off. My take is that the correlation between the Rams taking entertainment dollars and SLU attendance really is not as great as you assume.

Bigger factors in SLU's attendance decline are SLU being bad/mediocre and failing to capitalize on their mid/late 1990s success, popularity of college basketball declining overall, switching to the A-10 which had less well-known opponents than C-USA and it's predecessors, and most importantly moving from Scottrade to Chaifetz where the capacity was more than halved. I'll posit that if SLU still played at Scottrade, they may well have been in the top 25 in attendance in 2013 or 2014. Although I'm not saying SLU would be better off playing there.

Also, take into consideration the proximity of basketball rich programs like Marquette, Louisville, Memphis and Cincinnati in the C-USA days that always traveled well to STL and could have plenty of seats for them at Savvis/Scottrade.