I mean that’s all well and good but you can’t count on it. PC’s were counting on the 24 people that voted for TF2 to actually play and only 8 showed up. It’s easy to say they would have, could have, or should have, but when they’re signing up for the MTG tournament and find out that they have to sit out the Halo and Blazblue tournaments they may very well start singing a different tune. If it flops you’re only out ~$15 in prizes, which isn’t bad at all so as far as risk-taking the consequences of failure are pretty light.
What I would do is to try to find a local card store to sponsor your tournament. There’s at least one in Sylva and bound to be more in Asheville. Get with them ASAP and try to work something out with them. Not only can they advertise for us and send a high number of non-students to the event to compete but they can also sponsor the prize, which could end up being way more than what the club would have bought otherwise. If you can get a local or regional shop excited about it there’s no limit to how big you could grow this.