How To Make College Tennis More Popular

[Kirijax]

Somebody started a similar thread on the pros page so thought I'd toss this in here. College tennis is such a great sport but it is so screwed up in so many ways. The ITA obviously has no clue on how to promote the sport. Just looking at their hot mess of a website will tell you that. If the evil NCAA is even remotely interested in keeping the sport alive, you'd think they could come up with something better than they have now. What could college tennis programs do to make the sport more popular? And no, changing the rules isn't the answer.

By the way, I saw this on ATP's home page today. Hard to dismiss college tennis as a step up to the pros anymore. Kind of funny that Isner and Anderson are already out of their respective tournaments though.

 

[DaveKB]

Somebody started a similar thread on the pros page so thought I'd toss this in here. College tennis is such a great sport but it is so screwed up in so many ways. The ITA obviously has no clue on how to promote the sport. Just looking at their hot mess of a website will tell you that. If the evil NCAA is even remotely interested in keeping the sport alive, you'd think they could come up with something better than they have now. What could college tennis programs do to make the sport more popular? And no, changing the rules isn't the answer.

By the way, I saw this on ATP's home page today. Hard to dismiss college tennis as a step up to the pros anymore. Kind of funny that Isner and Anderson are already out of their respective tournaments though.

You have eliminated changing the rules, so what else is there?

One very off the wall thing idea is to greatly reduce the endless stream of team dual matches where about 90% of the time the winner is known in advance. I am going to travel 180 miles and watch UVA play NCS and WF. UVA will beat NCS 7-0 and win 7-0 or 6-1 vs WF. The only reason I am going is that this is my one of my UVA sports weekends with baseball, LAX, and the spring FB game.

College golf abandoned dual matches some years ago and now teams play in weekend tournaments with 20+ other teams involved. Of course the scoring in golf makes it easier. The downside is that, except once a year when you have your one annual tournament, the golfers are road warriors every weekend and I doubt hardly anyone comes to watch.

If you did something like that it might make it more fun for the players, but not for the tennis fans. The scoring system would have to change, but that is against your stated rule. It would have to be something like you play maybe 10 points against everyone in the tournament on your line (1,2,3 etc) and then whoever wins the most points wins the tournament. You can do it with doubles as well. Come to think of it this may be a really bad idea, but what else is there?

I have no idea how average to bad college tennis teams can possibly attract more fans unless they give away free food. 25 cent beer would really help, but they would to lower the drinking age to 18 first!

 

[chris-swede]

you never can compare college tennis to the pros. College tennis allways have the education site, players cannot be forever on the road , they are students in first.
Websites are an issue , for sure, but not the big problem, only some schools have really bad websites. Livescoring on the little schools is a problem. You should promote the players more on the homepages, the ita should bring more interviews, more players, coaches to learn to know more about players, would be more interesting to follow them.

the idea from golf is not to make in tennis, but the idea of the weekend tournaments is nice. The people enjoys things like conference tournament, all teams on one place in one big weekend. People love Blue-and-gray classic, the tournament at Corpus Christi, or sth like San Diego Invite. 3 to 4 days of tennis , with 8 or more teams, thats great !!! Bring everyone altogether. Fans can watch not only one match, they can watch even more !!! (Maybe we must eliminate the doubles point before singles in this tournaments, it maybe took to long time, people do n ot like to watch tennis from 8 A.M 1st match in the morning...to 6 P.M. in the evenings...)

 

[goran_ace]

I have no idea how average to bad college tennis teams can possibly attract more fans unless they give away free food. 25 cent beer would really help, but they would to lower the drinking age to 18

We had a decent team and a lot of people on campus didn't even know/care that we had a tennis team. A couple guys on my team thought about buying a keg if people would come out to watch. Didn't work out. Otherwise make friends with sororities and fraternities and have them make tennis team matches into school spirit activities for pledges.

 

[mydogsparty]

We had a decent team and a lot of people on campus didn't even know/care that we had a tennis team. A couple guys on my team thought about buying a keg if people would come out to watch. Didn't work out. Otherwise make friends with sororities and fraternities and have them make tennis team matches into school spirit activities for pledges.

I'm long since removed from being around MSU's campus so I'd like to watch college tennis on TV but I never know when it's on or if it's on at all. I'd tune in to see rivalry matches (IE: MSUvUM, UCLAvUSC, HarvardvYale, UNCvDuke, etc.).

 

[justinmadison]

I was looking around and noticed that UC Davis has a relatively new tennis facility with stands for 1,000 people. Does anyone know their average turnout for a home dual match?

 

[NortheastTennis]

I always thought that doubles and number one singles are the most exciting part about a college match, unless its tied 3-3.
What if they changed the format to 4 singles matchs, 2 doubles matches and make everything count as 1 point except number 1 singles which counts as 2 points. That forces teams to put their strongest players at 1 making that match exciting, making doubles a big priority still which is fun to watch, and significantly cutting down the time of matches. It seems to me that changing the format is the only way to please everyone although it means players must commit to being singles or doubles specialists.