Male Empty Stadium Hysteria (MESH) rages on, this time in response to student indifference at Mr UD‘s University of Maryland. UM’s got a great winning record, and still students aren’t showing up for football games! Or they’re clearing out at half-time!
A local commentator (quoted in my headline) exhibits a classic MESH symptom:
Saturday, I wanted to puke. As the Terps were fighting desperately to hang on to beat Virginia – a rival they were playing for the last time – the Cavaliers were driving into the teeth of a student section that was, I don’t know, three-quarters empty.
UD doesn’t want to nauseate this man yet more, but she would note that his point about only six Saturdays a year cuts both ways. As in – yeah, only a very few days out of the year, but every UM student has to dish out tons of money for the program and spend hugely on game day and sacrifice lots of other varsity sports for the sake of the football program etc. etc. etc. Really, quite an immense burden for six Saturdays a year.
November 3rd, 2013 at 10:26PM
UD, thanks for maintaining this theme, i.e., the empty stadium syndrome, and the administration/media rage at a growing apathy to all things football.
The bright lights who run our universities seem understood something that anyone else readily knows, that is, the customer is never fucking wrong. If they don’t want your product or service, then that is your problem, not theirs. Administrators are enraged that their core belief that CFB will always create its own demand are being negated and shoved back up their suites. Which means that the 1/2 billion dollar football stadium renovation being promoted by uni/Wall Street/developer hucksters at Texas A&M may produce huge swaths of empty seats, and the fact that the school may never make its money back. The audience doesn’t want it, so don’t spend any more money on CFB, admins.
November 4th, 2013 at 3:34AM
The universities have brought this on themselves. Stadiums are built to accommodate the egos of the coaches and the highly sought after recruits, not the number of student and non-student fans likely to attend the games.
My university’s stadium seats 85,000+ fans, yet the 48,000 students, who have no choice but pay a $7.90 per credit hour “athletic fee,” have been allotted just 16,000 of those seats. The tickets are “free,” on a first come, first served basis; students can only get one game ticket at a time, and the lines are long for most games. All of the student seats are in the end-zone area. For basketball, the students are allotted about 2,000 seats out of 15,000 in the arena. All are behind the baskets.
Students enroll in classes totaling approximately 494,000 credit hours per semester. At $7.90 per credit hour, the PER SEMESTER revenue going to the athletic department is approximately $3.9 million. They need it, too.
Before they can sell bonds to raise the revenue to over-build stadiums and other OPEC-country worthy facilities, they must have a substantial, guaranteed revenue stream. Students haven’t been able to pay for athletic tickets only if they’re interested since back in the 90’s.
While it’s true that students will have the opportunity to enjoy the football stadium, only students athletes can enjoy the indoor football practice field, and state of the art training facility that were also funded with student tuition dollars.
It’s not cheap to play Keeping Up With the Sabans (and Ducks), but it’s what the head coach and All-American quality recruits have come to expect. Students on financial aid end up paying far more than $7.90 per credit hour — some may be paying their athletic fee, years into the future.
November 4th, 2013 at 8:46AM
Great comment buried in there:
“How many UMD symphony orchestra concerts did you attend as a student? If the answer is less than “all of them,” then please, if you weren’t going to support your school, you should’ve gone somewhere else.
Repeat for all theatrical performances, all forensics matches, all student art showings, all student film showings, all baseball games, all lacrosse games, all soccer games, all track meets, etc.
Or does it only count as “supporting the school” if they’re doing the things *you* think matter?”
November 4th, 2013 at 12:10PM
Maybe all those students who are not in the stadium are at their jobs so they can afford to attend college? which is as expensive as it is partly because football costs so much to support?