The NCAA announced earlier this month that it will not collect attendance figures for the 2004 football season, meaning Ball State's failure to average 15,000 fans will not jeopardize its Division I-A status -- for now.
While the NCAA has not dropped the idea of an attendance mandate, the Board of Directors meets in April to finalize the requirements for Division I-A membership. Football is the only sport with this classification.
Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham called the news good for college football and said fellow Mid-American Conference athletics directors are relieved.
"It allows us to take a huge question mark off our minds," Cunningham said, "and get back to promoting intercollegiate athletics more as a whole."
At its January meeting, the board charged the NCAA staff to alter the attendance mandate or drop it. The president of one MAC school, Carol Cartwright at Kent State, is a member of the board.
Cunningham said he feels these actions are steps toward eliminating the attendance requirement altogether, which would be his ideal scenario.
"I don't think there's going to be any movement to reduce the number of I-A institutions," he said.
Ball State averaged 14,300 fans for the five home games in 2004. A stadium-record 23,718 attended the season opener against Boston College, but the numbers steadily dwindled from there. The next three games brought in 17,710, 14,612 and 10,149. Just 5,309 attended the home finale on Nov. 13, 3,500 less than what was needed to average 15,000.
If the NCAA counted those numbers toward the attendance mandate, the school would have had to average 15,000 in 2005 to avoid possibly losing its Division I-A status. The Mid-American Conference requires member schools to be I-A in football.
According to boxscores of 2004 games, three other MAC schools -- Buffalo, Central Michigan and Kent State -- also failed to reach the 15,000 mark.
"Universities are spending an inordinate amount of time and money trying to get people to attend," Cunningham said. "Much of the frustration I've expressed has been along those lines."
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