The Blackout Rules Continues to Haunt Us

As a part of my current crusade against the NFL black out rule (which has kept me from watching three of the last four Buffalo Bills games and is just generally unfair), I compiled some data based on the capacity of the 31 NFL stadiums (the Giants and Jets share Giants Stadium) and the metro populations of each NFL market.

Starting off, in terms of just stadium capacity, the Bills' Ralph Wilson Stadium ranks 6th out of 31 with 73,967 seats. In terms of metro population, Buffalo ranks 30th out of 31 with 1,254,066. Only the ultra-small market of Green Bay (226,778) ranks lower than Buffalo.

From just looking at these numbers, one can see that there's a huge divide between what the NFL is requiring the Bills to fill compared to what they have on hand to fill the stadium with. I wanted to further illustrate this discrepancy so I've decided to bring back the SSRI (Student to Seating Ratio Index) that I used a year ago to dissect college gym capacity. Of course in this case, we aren't dealing with students, we're dealing with population. It works the same. Here's how the SSRI pans out for NFL markets.

Green Bay 0.3216
Buffalo 0.0590
New Orleans 0.0524
Jacksonville 0.0498
Tennessee 0.0484
Carolina 0.0460
Kansas City 0.0408
Denver 0.0327
Cleveland 0.0325
Indianapolis 0.0311
Cincinnati 0.0310
Pittsburgh 0.0276
Baltimore 0.0266
Tampa Bay 0.0246
San Diego 0.0243
St. Louis 0.0237
Minnesota 0.0216
Seattle 0.0176
Arizona 0.0171
San Francisco 0.0169
Detroit 0.0145
Atlanta 0.0144
Miami 0.0139
Houston 0.0132
New England 0.0118
Philadelphia 0.0118
Washington 0.0114
Dallas 0.0113
Oakland 0.0090
Chicago 0.0064
New York 0.0036

So as you can see, the Bills rank second in SSRI. Unlike college gyms though, this means that the teams with high SSRIs have a much bigger gap to fill (and to not be blacked out) than the lower ranked teams do. In fact, the Bills have more than 16 times the work to do than either of the New York teams do.

With this big of a difference in the work teams have to do to sell their stadiums out, how does the NFL see the blackout rule as fair? It's obviously not.

Slim Gyms

Our gym is small. Way too small. How many of you saw the recent Naz game? Good for you if you did. I wasn’t able to get in. I forgot that because of our gymnasium’s capacity, you basically have to start camping out the night before a big game if you want a chance to get in. And we shouldn’t have to do that. This isn’t American Idol.

Now, I’ve researched 25 colleges and crunched some numbers to figure out how our problem compares to other colleges, both local and from around the country. If you don’t want to read a bunch of numbers, then this might be the time for you to read something else. Check out the Papa John’s ad (Papa John’s, please note this mention – send free pizza).

To illustrate the fact that our gym is too small, I’ve created the Student to Seating Ratio Index. The SSRI represents the number of seats a school has at their basketball venue compared to the student enrollment at that school. Basically, it’s students vs. the number of seats available. Here’s what I’ve got. The home of our basketball team, Manning & Napier Varsity Gymnasium, has a capacity of 1,200. The college itself has an enrollment of 2,075 which gives Fisher a SSRI of .58. For every one student here at Fisher, there’s .58 of a seat waiting for them at the gym. Find a buddy, since you’re sharing a seat.

Now let’s take our rival, Nazareth College. Enrollment of 1,800 and a gym capacity of 1,200 equals a SSRI rating of .67. Better than Fisher. Hear that, administration, Naz is better than Fisher at something.

On a bigger scale, look at Duke University. For a school of 6,500, they can pack 9,314 Cameron Crazies into a basketball game. That leads to a SSRI of 1.43. Almost one-and-a-half seats per student. Bring Star Jones to a game and she’ll be comfortable.

And the prize for best SSRI? Out of all the schools surveyed, Syracuse University is our champion. With 18,247 students and a basketball capacity of 33,000 at the Carrier Dome, ‘Cuse brings a 1.81 SSRI to the table. That’s almost two students per seat. Now Star Jones can bring her husband.

So what am I trying to say here? Ah, that’s right. We’ve fallen behind when it comes to taking care of our fans here at Fisher. And that’s a problem. We’re a school that prides itself on our athletic prowess yet those in charge have let this problem continue on. Let’s fix it. Let’s build a gymnasium that has a capacity bigger than my high school alma matter – Rush-Henrietta, SSRI of 1.11 – and welcome all of our students to basketball games, not just the ones who brought their sleeping bags. You have to admit that the current situation is like saying you want to be a fire truck when you grow up - it doesn't make sense.

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 5-Issue 8; February 8, 2006)