West Michigan ThunderHawks 2010

[jerry101jlh]

[quote=""newiflfan""]The players and coaches from the T'Hawks are an awesome group of guys. I was lucky enough to get to talk to quite a few of the guys over the course of the season and they were very nice. I think that's what bummed me out most with how the team finances tanked... a good group of guys got hosed.




If memory serves correctly, for the first few years they drew pretty well. For football the Van Andel holds a touch over 10K, and I would say that up through the early '00s they would draw 8K-9K on a pretty regular basis.

In the mid '00s the team wasn't all that competitive and attendance did drop. The other day I happened to stumble across some photos I snapped at a 2006 game, it was a Sunday afternoon (sporting events don't usually draw well on Sundays in GR) and if I had to guess I would say the crowd was around 4K. Attendance did start to rebound over the course of the 2008 season, as the team worked its way into the playoffs.

The Rampage did a pretty good job of marketing themselves. They had billboards, they had a weekly coach's show on local TV, they usually had a game or two that aired live on local TV. They had print, radio and TV spots, players made appearances. Basically they did many things that the ThunderHawks didn't.[/quote]

Well hopefully then if someone does take over the THawks, they will follow the lead of the Rampage because obviously it worked.

[newiflfan]

Anybody have an actual final score for the Maryland/West Michigan game? No update on either team website, and according to the scoreboard on the IFL website the score is currently 19-3 in favor of Maryland.

I say currently because on the IFL site the game is still listed as live. Which, by the way, must mean the two teams have some sort of record for longest game in league history.

[BananaCat]

Maryland won 25-13.