It was the kind of college basketball game that used to guarantee a packed house.
When North Carolina took the court to play Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., one night last month, it marked the reunion of two storied conference rivals whose campuses are separated by a short drive across the spine of a basketball-crazy state.
Yet when the No. 5 Tar Heels arrived, they found a crowd nearly 2,000 short of capacity. Never mind that Wake is having an off year; it was the lowest turnout for that matchup since Joel Coliseum opened in 1989.
Across the 12-team Atlantic Coast Conference this season, the story is much the same. Average home attendance at men's games, which has fallen in each of the past four seasons, is tracking 13.5 percent below the final average from 2006.
At Duke, the famously raucous student fans known as "Cameron Crazies" aren't using their full ticket allotment this season. At Maryland, attendance at Comcast Center has dropped 24 percent in six years, prompting a student-led online campaign to encourage others to show up.
While national TV ratings on ESPN are steady, and still lead all major conferences, fewer people are attending games. Since 2004, the ACC's attendance, even including its popular annual tournament, has dropped by 14 percent, the largest for any of the six major conferences.
In a conference that specializes in basketball and plays host to the historic Duke-North Carolina blood feud, this is akin to saying football doesn't pack 'em in like it used to in Green Bay.
Dave Odom, a former Wake Forest coach who is a broadcast analyst for several networks, says the change has been exceptionally jarring to people who remember the conference's early days.
"It's more noticeable because we know what it was like when it was at its peak," he said. "To see it anything less than that is disturbing and regrettable. It's sad to watch it."
John Swofford, the ACC commissioner, said in a statement the league has experienced "transition in coaches and membership including eight coaching changes in the past three years."
Swofford said the ACC's conference tournament has the highest average attendance of any in the country. He added that TV viewership "remains strong and we are on more platforms than ever before."
With Pittsburgh and Syracuse scheduled to join the conference by 2014, he said, "the future couldn't be brighter."
One of the most chilling explanations for the ACC and its member schools is that the decline is a self-inflicted wound: the result of the ACC's recent expansion. According to NCAA statistics, the ACC's average attendance peaked at 11,990 in 2004, the season before Miami and Virginia Tech joined the conference and two before Boston College did.
The addition of those teams meant that instead of playing each conference opponent at least twice per season, teams now don't play every opponent in the conference at home every year. Former Maryland coach Lefty Driesell said by playing less-familiar teams, "students don't have any connection."
