At some point during every Terrapins men’s basketball or football season, “the talk” happens.

Sometimes it’s brought up by a famous alum with a national platform, such as ESPN host Scott Van Pelt, or by a flurry of photos posted to Twitter before a game. And each time, it’s followed by self-examination, sometimes unpleasant online discourse and reassurances that things aren’t really as bad as they seem.

But no matter the cause, the same question and subsequent discussion happens every year: Why can’t Terps fans fill Byrd Stadium and Comcast Center?

Tuesday night’s win over Wake Forest, which drew an announced 10,665 — the smallest crowd to attend a home ACC game this season — to the 17,950-seat Comcast Center, was just the latest game to spark this tired conversation.

And at this point, it’s clear: Fans just aren’t going to come to games unless it’s a big contest against a national name. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the truth. That’s not to say Terps fans aren’t as passionate as they used to be, but the way the culture and climate is right now, a mammoth arena won’t be filled every night.

Many fans on Twitter after Tuesday night’s game pointed to the Terps’ lack of success as a main reason for the attendance woes. The Terps are 7-7 in ACC play and 15-12 overall, making them 57-40 overall and 21-27 in the ACC since coach Mark Turgeon took over in 2011. The Terps are an average team, and mediocrity is the easiest way to build apathy.

For a program with expectations as high as this one, it is disappointing. This university’s students and recent alumni were raised on Gary Williams, Juan Dixon, Steve Blake and the 2002 national championship. The fan base is starved for a return to the NCAA Tournament, which the Terps haven’t reached since 2010.

But arguing that winning solves everything is shortsighted. Sure, it helps, but take a look at other successful college teams. According to a Duke Chronicle report from January 2012, Duke started selling tickets for the student section at Cameron Indoor Stadium — arguably one of the most famous in the nation — to the public to fill it. That’s for one of the most prestigious basketball programs in history.

In November 2012, The Crimson White at Alabama reported that about 30 percent of student tickets went unused for Crimson Tide football games at Bryant-Denny Stadium, and a Wall Street Journal article in August 2013 suggested the Alabama fan base is “bored.” That’s for a program with a 60-7 record and three national championships over the past five years.

Clearly, it’s not a problem unique to this university. Attendance is down all over the country, and it’s because of a number of factors, including the rise of amenities available to fans to enhance the home-viewing experience. Instead of roasting in the bleachers in Byrd Stadium in 90-degree weather in September or trekking more than a mile from South Campus to Comcast Center in the dead of winter, students can watch on a flat-screen or find an online stream to watch from the comfort of their dorm rooms with their favorite beverage in hand.

And this season, the Terps haven’t been playing bad basketball, either. They were inches or centimeters or millimeters or nanometers away from upsetting then-No. 8 Duke on Saturday, and arguably two plays away from beating then-No. 17 Virginia on the road. Even their loss to North Carolina appears worse on paper than it was. After digging a deep hole early, the Terps played the Tar Heels almost even in the second half.

So where does the blame fall? On the fans for not making the trip to the stadiums and arenas on the campus? On the Terps for just not being that good? Or is it just that Comcast Center, which was built at the height of the Terps’ success and is the fourth-largest arena in the ACC, is just too big to fill?

It’s unfair to heap the blame all on one thing. It’s never black and white — it doesn’t make sense to blame only students while expecting them to watch a subpar product, and it doesn’t make sense to blame the Terps when they can’t directly control the number of people who come to the games.

In the end, what’s happening at this university is symptomatic of a larger, national problem, one that doesn’t really have a distinct solution. Until things change — however that happens — that’s the way it is.

But at least Monday’s game against No. 1 Syracuse will be packed.

Daniel Gallen is the sports editor of The Diamondback. He can be reached at dgallendbk@gmail.com.