Football Ends, Basketball Cancelled
Our regular football season came to an end Saturday at JMU with Big Red's best game there this year. Liberty's home season ended two weeks ago. Both schools are still in the hunt for a playoff game Thanksgiving weekend so the outcome of this week's road games are critical to both schools. Possibly, we could have playoff games at both schools which would be a terrific bonus for Big Red.
Even though Saturday's game was our best effort of the year at JMU, our business there was off 23% from last year. I've found that troubling all season and am not sure what the cure is. The stadium is bigger and attendance way up, plus we added fries this year and our sales should have gone up. That, unfortunately, didn't happen.
Liberty's sales was actually up 3%, a figure that was slmost as surprising to me. If you remember, we had 2 disastorous games out of the six home games. Thankfully, the others were great so that the year ended with an increase.
I was told on Friday that due to construction work and changes in the Vines Center that we wouldn't be used for basketball this year. I'm quite disappointed with that as I had already booked those dates, planned some changes to my menu to make basketball more profitable, and due to my hip situation, had not looked for any other bookings. Now, to try to keep some money coming in and to keep my guys busy, I'm searching for any kind of bookings over the winter months. After 5 years at the Vines Center, Big Red won't be there again.
