What you gonna do when she is gone?
If you’re the University of Alabama, famed for your rabid fans and regally compensated coach, you’re going to “review photos and video of the [student] section during games to determine which organizations are leaving early and violators could have block seating privileges taken away.”
So, uh, let’s step back and review.
Although we are assured that fan rabidity is positively mythic at Alabama (you can’t walk for all the statues of coaches all over campus; watch for Penn State’s toppled Paterno statue to be re-erected with full honors at UA), everybody walks out once it’s clear the team has won the game. In the most recent case, victory was obvious well before half-time, see, and the stands emptied…
But get a load of those stands! Part of the wild carefree business of being a Bama fan is constant electronic surveillance. Whee! And just so you know, kiddo — Your school is watching your every move, and if you leave your fucking seat your name is entered on UA’s Enemies of the Tide list and you will be punished. Okay? ‘Kay?
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UD has written a good deal – and she will write more as the problem intensifies – about what she calls fantasms: the vanishing fans of university football. She has suggested some remedies for the situation short of UA’s (and other schools’) petty and doomed-to-fail procedures. (What do all the cameras pick up when they’re filming – for a national audience – students who don’t want to be there? Students who are drunk and displeased? Expect an uptick in mooning.)
Short of the placement in the stands of animatronic fans (not all universities will want to go this route), UD sees no alternative to the use of drones. The Phantom (Fantom?) Drone is available at Amazon for under five hundred dollars and can, with, say, five or so others, continually buzz the student section in such a way as to make use of any mounted weaponry unnecessary.
October 22nd, 2013 at 11:36AM
No coverage of The Hatchet’s report on GW’s deceit?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/21/239277520/george-washington-university-misrepresented-its-admission-policy
October 22nd, 2013 at 11:58AM
GTWMA: Sure. Hold your horses.
October 22nd, 2013 at 12:03PM
Too many sticks here, not enough carrots. College credit for game-day attendance: surely its time has come?
October 22nd, 2013 at 2:11PM
Alan: LOL. Excellent idea. Hadn’t thought of it.
October 22nd, 2013 at 2:51PM
Some have already gone way beyond that:
“Texas is unusual in that high-school sports aren’t completely extracurricular. The state has long allowed students who are members of sports teams to take one athletics class during a normal school day, a period that can be filled with anything from watching game films and weight lifting to sitting in study hall.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125150176952368293
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:52AM
How would people respond if movie studios said to audiences that if they walked out of flicks, they would be punished some way? It seems that the product isn’t that good, no matter how much marketing is done to bullshit us of the quality.
And to your point of Bama’s putatively rabid fan base, UA actively promotes that notion. Last season, the school created an ad for broadcasting. It was two married alums, who had to make the decision whether or not they should attend their daughter’s wedding, or miss a game. No problem, they didn’t miss the game, they jumped into some football length RV, drove off, and made the wedding, dressed in a tux and gown, because Bama alums know what’s important. Tennessee’s commercial flack the school’s science departments and their connection Oak Ridge National Labs. Bama features their fan’s devotion to football. But that kind of PR would fall flat on its face if the student section is devoid of, well, students.