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Actually, ND State was 5th in attendance last year in FCS, but don't let the facts get in the way of your entertaining, yet off balance take. FCS Attendance, 2016 - Top 5 1. Montana, 25,377 2. James Madison 19,844 3. Florida A&M 19,710 4. Jackson St. 19,660 5. North Dakota St. 18,556 The average attendance for the CAA was 9,232 in 2016. Towson's average attendance was 5,703 in 2016, down considerably every year since 2011. 2008 - 4,980 > Last year of Coach Combs 2009 - 6,283, +26% 2010 - 7,107, +13% 2011 - 8,949, +26% 2012 - 8,691, -3% 2013 - 8,473, -2.5% 2014 - 7,288, -13.9% 2015 - 6,594, -9.52% 2016 - 5,703, -13.53% 2017 - 5,783 And so far this year, 5,783, which so far is a gain of +80 fans per game. Delaware and Rhode Island games still to come, so unless there is a push at the end of the year it could end up as a 10-year low for attendance.

My man Tgr4life, it's not putting words in your mouth when I simply mention the person responsible for the very action that you called out. You say that the key is fundraising, so I pointed out the person responsible for doing that job. If the HEAD COACH is accountable for ON THE FIELD, shouldn't the HEAD FUNDRAISER be held responsible for RAISING MONEY. I mean, this is the job they were hired to do. You cannot make excuses for the lack of performance of the team on the field by sharing that "all of the significant advances are made through outside donations, not budget. Cole Field House was redone through donations, many SEC schools are building new facilities through donations....not budget. Money needs to be raised from outside of the budget process in order to appropriately fund the program." and then back off in your next post. C'mon man, don't be that guy. Tgr4life actually went on to double down on the comment with "but there is NO question that in order for a program to succeed regularly, outside money is necessary. Budget covers the bare necessities. Football and basketball, nationally, are the sports where alumni donate the least. For a FCS school to succeed regularly, someone needs to change that trend at that school." So who is responsible for "changing the trend at the school" in fundraising? It's not the head coach, his job is to recruit, coach, and manage the football program. It's partly the Director of Athletics, expressly when the AD, like TL, is supposedly a "fundraiser". But, more than anyone else, RAISING MONEY is the absolute focus of one person more than any other, the TOP FUNDRAISER for Towson Athletics, which, as I have shown above, is simply not qualified to do the job in comparison to his peers at Delaware and James Madison. You cannot complain about not having fundraising dollars, tie that to the non-performance on the field, and not hold the people accountable who are charged with actually raising money.

I do not disagree that Towson needs to raise more money. That's an absolute fact. You have to wonder why the head of the athletics fundraising efforts is not a professional fundraiser. Dan Crowley may have been a great quarterback, as his bio states, but he is not a fundraiser. Why was he hired as the Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Development, when he had no development leadership experience at all? Don't take my word for it, read his bio http://www.towsontigers.com/staff.aspx?staff=28 Delaware's fundraiser was the lead development guy at the University of Michigan for 5 years before going to be the #2 in the Blue Hens department http://www.bluehens.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=29100&ATCLID=211075115 JMU's top money raiser came from Duke. http://jmusports.com/staff.aspx?staff=550 What experience did Towson seek out? No fundraising experience at all, but he played football at Towson. This is exactly our problem. Other schools hire professionals to lead fundraising, we hire a former player who everyone knows. How's that working out Tgr4life? Yes, TL is a fundraiser, but he's also running the department and paying attention to 19 sports, not just football and not just fundraising. It also helps fundraising when you make the National Championship game, and then, do not lose to low scholarship Central Connecticut State in the home opener the following season. CCSU had 1/3 the scholarships that Towson did, and was playing it's first game under a new coach, on the road. Do you think their fundraising went up after coming in and beating us at Minnegan Field? Perhaps, but they finished 3-9 that season, also beating URI and St Francis. So, to your point Tgr4life, CCSU had 1/3 the scholarships that Towson had, a new coach, was playing on the road, and got it done. St Francis had 1/3 the scholarships of TU and came within a 41 yard FG of beating us this year. You're making the case that an $8,000,000 football budget is not competitive enough at Towson to expect 7-8 wins on an annual basis? If that's the case, perhaps we don't need to be spending money on football, as it's clearly not captivating anyones attention. Bring back soccer, drop football, and save 7 million bucks in the process.

Numbers never lie, and Towson is in the best shape in terms of athletics budget in the history of the program. The football budget is 250% that of the men's basketball budget and 600% of the men's lacrosse program in 2017. As of 2015-16, Towson's TOTAL expense budget was TOP 4 for the CAA: http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/# 1 James Madison $47,442,648 • 18 sports, will not be in the CAA much longer as they are looking to move up to FBS 2 Delaware $34,309,705 • 21 sports and a $41,618 out of state cost of attendance, with only 28 in-state kids on their 2017 football roster, that means that 112 of their student-athletes coming from outside of Delaware, that they are spending at least $3,780,000 annually on out of state scholarships for football. 3 Stony Brook $30,968,765 • 17 sports, Long Island Cost of Living inflates this budget as does the $41,290 cost of attendance 4 Towson $29,412,429 • 19 sports, Football has the largest budget of any sport - over $8m in 2017-18 and one of the lowest tuitions in the league, $35,336 in-state and $37,004 for out-of-state students, with 35 students on the current football roster from Maryland 5 UNH $28,908,841 • 19 sports, with TWO Ice Hockey programs which are very expensive + a $46,000 out of state cost of attendance 6 W&M $26,499,511 • 23 sports - the largest athletic program in the CAA with in-state cost of attendance being $35,900 and out of state a whopping $56,475 7 Maine $20,888,618 • 17 sports, with TWO Ice Hockey programs which are very expensive, off-set by the cheapest cost of attendance in the league at under $10,000 8 URI $26,170,562 • 18 sports, including A-10 men's and women's basketball programs and a Football program that was de-emphisized a few years ago. In-state is $28,100 cost of attendance and out of state is $44,100 9 Albany $20,904,597 • 18 sports with in-state costs at $24,700 and out-of-state at $39,800 NOTE: Elon, Villanova and Richmond are Private and do not report figures Elon just moved to the CAA from the Southern Conference and has the #3 CAA cost of attendance at just under $46,670 > contrast that with Towson's which is $35,336 in-state and $37,004 for out-of-state students Villanova plays basketball, and all other sports other than football, in the Big East and has 24 sports overall - their cost of attendance is $62,773, #2 among CAA football playing schools Richmond has 19 sports, and is the most expensive school playing football in the CAA at with a $63,000 cost of attendance > contrast that with Towson's which is $35,336 in-state and $37,004 for out-of-state students The argument used in the earlier post that TOWSON ATHLETICS is cash poor compared to the rest of the CAA is a total, outright, misleading statement. Ambrose coached teams have winning records against only URI, W&M and Maine - all have inferior budgets to Towson. URI 5-2 W&M 4-3 MAINE 3-2 RICHMOND 3-3 UNH 3-4 DELAWARE 3-5 VILLANOVA 3-6 ELON 2-1 STONY BROOK 2-3 ALBANY 1-0 JMU 1-5 TOTAL VS CAA 30-34 Ambrose coached teams have winning records against only URI, W&M and Maine - all have inferior budgets to Towson. The non-conference numbers are also pretty pedestrian, with the highlight of the win over UCONN and the lowlights of the losses to Central Connecticut State and Dartmouth. 18-9 vs FCS teams / 4-1 vs Low Scholarship teams / 3-2 in FCS Playoffs / 2-2 vs Non-Scholarship teams / 1-8 vs FBS teams St Francis 4-0 Low Scholarship FCS Coastal Carolina 2-0 Now FBS, was FCS at the time of the games NC Central 2-0 FCS Holy Cross 2-0 Non-Scholarship FCS Delaware State 2-0 FCS Fordham 1-0 FCS Playoffs E Illinois 1-0 FCS Playoffs E Washington 1-0 FCS Playoffs UCONN 1-0 FBS Colgate 1-0 FCS Morgan State 2-1 FCS Kent State 0-1 FBS LSU 0-1 FBS Northwestern 0-1 FBS Northeastern 0-1 FCS, no longer has a football program Indiana 0-1 FBS Columbia 0-1 Non-Scholarship FCS UMASS 0-1 Now FBS, was FCS at the time of the game Lehigh 0-1 FCS Playoffs ECU 0-1 FBS N Dakota State 0-1 FCS Playoffs CCSU 0-1 Low Scholarship FCS USF 0-1 FBS Dartmouth 0-1 Non-Scholarship FCS WVU 0-1 FBS Maryland 0-2 FBS TOTAL vs Non-Conference Foes 19-17 Perhaps if Rob Ambrose didn't hold up the Towson Athletics Budget to get paid so much they could spend more on the program. In the end, Rob is out for Rob, not the program. Not that it's a bad thing, but let's park the notion that he is loyal to Towson, as in the end, he is going to stay here as long as he can and bank the cash with the assumption that no one will ever fire an "Alum" and that he can always play the "we are not funded card" and keep his job.

UD fired their previous coach & made a good hire with the new one. They might go to the playoffs this season. Perhaps there’s a lesson for us in what UD did.

The atmosphere at Minnegan Field has never been the same since 2013 when Leonard and his minions took over. 60% of that is due to the team not winning. 40% is due to the lack of attention to detail that the AD and his staff have put into creating atmosphere. Adding in fence and tents does not get kids out to the games. The fact that Leonard has completely rolled over to the Student Affairs people, led by Deb Moriarty, has pretty much killed off students wanting to go to games as they are afraid that they will be stalked by Moriarty and the Towson U PD if they are ever seen with any alcohol (can't print that) Moriarty killed off the tailgating with her 4 pages of tailgating rules. If we were lucky there would be a giant house that would land on this Witch and take her out. She hates athletics behind the scenes, see below the proof.

I've been to just about every home game since 2005, plenty of away games and the championship of course. I haven't been as active on this blog recenlty because I just feel it is the same old same old for the past several years. I have said before that the CAA is all about offense. You out score your opponents period. There are exceptions to this rule but by in large this is how you win in the CAA. We haven't had an offense that can compete in the CAA since West's last year. Wethington was a substantial loss. I knew it. Simpson is too small to be an every down and his injuries are proving this to be the case. I don't think we will ever know how Stover is or the line is if you have no one that can make something out of nothing running the ball. Someone that the other team is concerned with. I think Wethington was the only RB on our team that had the potential to do that and he isn't here. So if you don't have a winning team you need atmosphere. I have tried and tried to bring as many people and family to all of the games every year. The tailgate debacle with the school cracking down on tailgating has been an unmitigated disaster. Even though this was several years ago, the school still has an overwhelming police and security presence like I have never seen at any other tailgate. Sometimes it just comes off as shear harassment by the police and security staff just itching to make a comment and look for something to enforce. Out of all my years tailgating I have not seen one incident that I can remember that was in need of enforcement in Lot 13. Yet the amount of police presence and security patrol is ridiculous. I brought my wife to the game against Richmond where she has not been in a while. She just couldn't believe the feeling that was portrayed with all of the security and police presence, especially where all the season ticket holders and alumni were set up. Just ridiculous. No wonder students don't want to come to the games. With that kind of scrutinty it would almost be a guarantee, if you were a student, to get harassed and probably some type of citation or arrest. Drinking and tailgating are never going away at any college in the United States. It just is never going to happen. Yes monitor Towson but don't live in an unrealistic world and ruin the tailgating tradition and atmosphere of college football. Lot 14 is just dead for years now.

8 TD’s by the offense in 7 games No player on offense has scored more than 1 TD Leading rusher, Stover, averaging 26 yards per game Leading RB rusher averaging 25 yards per game 3 passing TD’s & 11 INT’s Offense averaging 12 ppg Highest single game scoring output-17 points Average yards per carry-2.9