Western's women's basketball team lost its last home game. Nothing to be concerned about, Western has had a mediocre sports program for years. What should concern the Western Athletic Department and top administrators is the fact that there were only 123 fans at the game.

Attendance at Western's athletic events has significantly decreased in all sports over the past few years. Western has a 3,000 seat football stadium. This season the average attendance at the games was only 346. At the Angelo State game attendance was 175. Last year the homecoming game had attendance of 1,125 this year 525.

Here's a list of the four top sports at Western and how attendance has decreased from the 2011-12 season.

Football: average attendance 2011-12; 882, last season 346 a decrease of 61%

Men's Basketball: average attendance 2011-12; 1,266, last season 169 a decrease of 87%

Women's Basketball: 2011-12 average attendance; 375, last season 125 a decrease of 67%

Volleyball: 2011-12 average attendance 425, last season 283 a decrease of 33%

Total attendance at all the games in 2011-12 was 27,880 total attendance this past year 8,506 a decrease of 70%.

The athletic games appear to not be the place to be. The athletic program is not cheap, over 200 athletes, about 30 coaches and a cost over 5 million dollars.

Perhaps the problem is the emphasis of the administration on on-line classes. There has been a large decrease in undergraduate enrollment with a corresponding increase in on-line graduate enrollment. The University says that over 40% of its classes are now on-line.

Perhaps the University needs to modernize their athletic program, I read that the new varsity sport at colleges is computer gaming. With the new emphasis on drones by the University, perhaps it should have a drone racing team.

Whatever the reason for the decrease in fans, the University needs to do something.

Alfred Milligan
Silver City NM