From: Dannen, Troy A <
[email protected]>
To: David Price <
[email protected]>
Cc: Kai, Tyler Jon H <
[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, Jan 9, 2019 9:45 am
Subject: Re: Thursday Night Opener
Thanks, Dave. I’ll have Tyler reach out to you. As you can imagine, my priority is investing my time in those who invest in us, and frankly, my time in responding to questions such as this should be dedicated to those who invest in our programs.
I can not speak to scheduling decisions prior to Willie and me arriving in December, 2015, but
the league has the final say in moving both conference and non-conference games off of Saturdays, and television is often a factor in those decisions. Discussions about league scheduling and television assignments have been ongoing and will likely be announced in February.
Know that there are certain advantages to playing Thursday from a competitive standpoint, as it allows us to begin practice earlier in August, and in 2019, gives us additional days heading into our Auburn game. I know this year we had players available for the Navy game following injuries in the previous Thursday game at Houston solely because we had extra recovery time.
Your attendance assertions are not accurate. The largest student crowd of the year (by 20%) was for our Thursday opener in 2018. The ticket revenue for our Thursday games each of the past two years has ranked #3 and #2, respectively, of our six home games.
Finally, if we can not get a guarantee from the AAC of a night game for week 1, we would prefer to avoid a day start on Labor Day weekend due to heat. Thursday does guarantee a night game.
These are the factors which lead to a Thursday opener.
The key player, of course, is the AAC and our television partners, but there are many other reasons to prefer the move on Tulane’s part.
I’m happy you have committed to joining the Green Wave Club. Tyler will have options for you to even make that payment over a period of time if that helps your budgeting.
Troy