In one of many similar pathetic appeals across the nation, Minnesota’s Star Tribune editorial board begs its readers to go to its state university’s football games. The prospect of what looks to be 13,000 empty seats at UM’s opening game (“cold weather will not be a legitimate excuse for staying away”) seems to have generated panic and depression at the newspaper, which no doubt realizes that widespread and growing indifference to the game will have a serious impact on its circulation and ad revenue and all.

But look how they make the case, petites.

The university has made a large investment in coaching salaries and facilities. Gophers fans can be part of the solution by buying tickets, getting the maroon and gold out of the closet and coming back to campus on game days.

Parsing the logic here is a challenge. I guess the crux of the thing lies in the word “solution.” Uh… because UM, over intense local opposition, insisted on building a stadium it can’t afford, and because it hires incredibly expensive jerks throughout its athletics programs, the citizens of the state must bail it out of all the financial and legal and reputational problems it has predictably brought on itself.

UM, in other words, has done its part in steadily bankrupting itself, demanding more and more sports money from its students, and making the school a laughingstock when its AD turns out to be a drunken idiot who reels around town “asking if he [can] perform oral sex” on random women; now the good people of Minnesota must do their part by spending huge money to attend games in which they have no interest.

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The Wall Street Journal just published a piece – COLLEGE FOOTBALL’S GROWING PROBLEM: EMPTY SEATS – which features in its first paragraphs (the only ones you can read without subscribing) the self-same University of Minnesota. It explains why the local editorialists pleaded with their readers not merely to buy tickets but to actually show up in the stadium on game day. WSJ:

When Minnesota hosted Nebraska at TCF Bank Stadium last year, the game featured charismatic new Golden Gophers coach P.J. Fleck, a home team fighting for a bowl berth and a big-name opponent. The announced attendance was 39,933—an OK crowd for a crisp November day in Minneapolis — but it didn’t tell the whole story.

Only 25,493 ticketed fans were counted at the gates, 36% lower than the announced attendance and about half of the stadium’s capacity. More than 14,000 people who bought tickets or got them for free didn’t show up.