Utah Jazz carved niche in college hoops heaven

Editor's note: This is the last of a seven-part series exploring the state of basketball in Utah.

SALT LAKE CITY — Some Utah sports fans openly long for the good ol' days when crowds routinely filled up arenas to watch hoops in the Beehive State.

It used to be a basketball state, but now it's a football state, right?

That's the popular rhetoric, at least.

Take the 1978-79 season for one stark example. That year, BYU, Utah, Utah State and Weber State combined to average about 48,000 fans per game. Compare that to the most-recent hoops year of 2008-09, when the same four college programs had a whopping 11,000 fewer spectators in the stands for each contest. Now times that by 15-20 home games, and you can see why some might feel the need to wax nostalgic.

Until, that is, you remember what happened in 1979.

That's when New Orleans helped jazz up the Utah sports scene, sending Salt Lake City an NBA franchise. That gave local hoops fans a professional basketball option and gave the colleges some competition.

Most Utah universities are experiencing attendance woes compared to their heydays of the 1970s through the mid-1990s, but the notion that that is reflective of declining interest in the sport statewide might not exactly be the case.

It might just be a campus problem.

Crowd sizes, even while down this year, are not too far from being as good as they have ever been on the pro level.

Where amazing happens?

Sure, sometimes. Especially when Sundiata Gaines and LeBron James square off.

Where attracting-big-crowds-still happens?

Almost always.

"I actually think basketball is becoming more popular in the marketplace," said Jazz executive Jim Olson, the senior vice president of sales and marketing. "The reason why I say that is more and more of the younger crowd is becoming more interested in basketball."

Thanks in large part, of course, to the Utah Jazz.

In 2008-09, the NBA organization had 816,000 people pass through the turnstiles at EnergySolutions Arena — for an average of 19,903 spectators (sold tickets, technically) over 41 regular-season games.