“A lot of sports have done what they can to make their events more friendly,” he said, citing basketball’s adoption of shot clocks and 3-point lines as an example. “Ours has not done that.”

Too many programs, he said, are content to glide along, virtually unnoticed, like many other college sports beyond football or men’s basketball.

“I just want gymnastics to make a noise,” Marsden said.

The sport is loudest in the SEC, which dominates gymnastics similar to the way it does football. Georgia won 10 national championships, including five from 2005 to 2009, under its former coach Suzanne Yoculan. Alabama, a six-time champion under Sarah Patterson, who retired last year, is Utah’s nearest rival in attendance, averaging 12,826 fans last season.

“Greg started earliest, and he set the standard,” said Patterson, who started coaching Alabama in 1978. “There were two people I took great advice from at the start of my career. One was Pat Summitt. The other was Greg Marsden.”

Both Marsden and Summitt, the longtime Tennessee women’s basketball coach, stressed the value of marketing the program.

“Getting 12,000 people, that’s as much a goal of mine as winning an SEC championship or a national championship,” Patterson said, echoing Marsden’s philosophy.

Now, as if contagious, gymnastics continues to grow in the SEC, where seven universities were among the top 10 in attendance last year. The SEC Network, part of ESPN, began airing meets live this season, with plans to expand its coverage significantly, a spokeswoman said.