Before the Buffaloes took off on their longest unbeaten start to a season in 76 years, and before a large freshman class had an opportunity to turn heads, Tad Boyle discussed the future of the Colorado men’s basketball program.
In a still-burgeoning era of college basketball in which chasing the most lucrative NIL and revenue sharing deals is the norm, the recruit-retain-develop blueprint that has served Boyle so well in a tenure now in its 16th season is becoming a relic.
And itap a format that, now more than ever, requires fan support beyond waving pom-poms and fervent social media posts.
“I would say to our fan base — if you want to continue to watch kids come into Colorado basketball and grow and develop before your eyes, you need to come support them,” Boyle said during a September interview with the Daily Camera ahead of the start of preseason practice. “You need to fill the CU Events Center again. Certainly for Big 12 games. For us to compete in this league, playing nine games at home and nine on the road, our home court advantage has to be legitimate. And our fans are a big part of that.”
So far, the attendance at the Events Center hasn’t been doing its part.
Through the first six games of the season, the Buffs are on pace for the worst average attendance figure of Boyle’s 16 seasons at CU.
The attendance for CU’s most recent home game, 4,931 for , lowered the average attendance at the Events Center so far this season to 5,474. While that figure is certain to climb during Big 12 play, particularly with big draws like Kansas and Arizona on the docket, CU’s attendance is about 574 fewer per game than the mark compiled during the non-Colorado State nonconference games last year.
CU also is hitting the pre-holiday home games that typically are among the lowest-attended of the season, beginning with Saturday’s date against UTSA (2 p.m., ESPN+).
“I am very appreciative and thankful for the fans that are showing up,” Boyle said earlier this week. “And the feedback I’ve gotten to a person, unsolicited feedback, is this is a fun team to watch. This is a fun team to cheer for. I know itap a fun team to coach, even though, yeah, we tricked off a game in Fort Collins we should’ve gotten. I’m appreciative of the fans that do come.
“I just look at it like this — if everybody would just bring one extra person, we double our attendance. I’m a pretty simplistic guy, but thatap how I think. Hopefully it will get better as the season progresses.”
It was during Boyle’s third season in Boulder, during the 2012-13 campaign on the heels of the 2012 Pac-12 Conference tournament championship, that CU averaged a record 10,392. With nowhere to go but down from there, attendance decreased each of the next six seasons, albeit slightly at first, before reaching a nadir with a regular-season average of 7,185 in 2018-19.
The average attendance rebounded slightly to 7,979 in 2019-20 but, not including the mostly fan-less pandemic season of 2020-21, attendance dipped to a Boyle-era low of 6,752 for the 2022-23 regular season. That increased again with the NCAA Tournament team of the following year (7,534), but dropped once again during last year’s 21-loss campaign (7,038).
The Buffs went 212 consecutive regular-season home games between sub-5,000 attendance marks before the showing against Cal Baptist. Boyle hopes the onset of the Big 12 slate gets the Events Center rocking again.
“Itap about us. Itap not about who we’re playing,” Boyle said. “And we’re not there yet. Itap got to be about Colorado. When people go to Hilton Coliseum they don’t go to see the opponent. They go to see the (Iowa State) Cyclones. Thatap where we gotta get. Fifteen years in and we’re not there yet. But I’m appreciative of the ones that are coming.”
