From the mouths of babes. “Division I marketing executives” can huddle “at the convention for the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators” and try to “figure out how to attract students to [university] football games,” but the numbers will just keep tanking until they listen to the students.
Journalists are elegiac: WHERE HAVE THE STUDENT FANS GONE? laments a Chicago Tribune article.
Division I marketing executives are confused: They are at a highly-paid, tanked-up loss as they reel from luxury retreat to luxury retreat refusing to understand a truth that threatens to put them out of business. Division I football doesn’t need marketing executives. It needs roofers, lighting experts, and liquor distributors to work together to make stadiums indistinguishable from bars.
Tailgate? No. Not a solution.
Think about it. As drunk as students get at a tailgate, there’s still the sun.
The solution to student attendance at football games is simple. It’ll cost some money, but since when do universities mind bankrupting their academic side to futz with their stadium? Here are the steps.
1. Build tunnels linking dorms to the stadium.
2. Put a roof over the stadium.
3. Create warm alehouse lighting.
4. Using the model of exit doors on airplanes, each student who sits at the end of a bleacher row will agree to be ready to deliver alcohol to any student anywhere on that row who is not drunk anymore.
August 24th, 2014 at 8:57AM
You also need install stadium stools, but the stools need to have backs. Spectators teetering over backwards on backless seats isn’t so bad, but sitting backwards and falling backwards in a stadium would be extremely bad news.
August 24th, 2014 at 9:01AM
MattF: That’s a detail I hadn’t thought of.
August 24th, 2014 at 9:03AM
Well, voice of experience here.