student attendance crisis

You're gonna stay for the fourth quarter of our game against Chattanooga. This is actually not as bad as it sounds at first blush:

Saban, the Alabama football coach, has long been peeved that the student section at Bryant-Denny Stadium empties early. So this season, the university is rewarding students who attend games — and stay until the fourth quarter — with an alluring prize: improved access to tickets to the SEC championship game and to the College Football Playoff semifinals and championship game, which Alabama is trying to reach for the fifth consecutive season.

But to do this, Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step: using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays.

This doesn't impact anyone's ability to get student tickets for the regular season, it just sets up some bonus goals for diehards who want post-season tickets and opt-in to this program. Now, a bunch of people have pointed out the obvious flaw in which people just leave their phones with freshman pledges or whoever, but at least the idea is to prioritize attendance and dedication.

Michigan does nothing along these lines and really dumped on the idea of dedication mattering when they re-seated Crisler the instant the program got good. Michigan should have programs that reward attendance—not necessarily for students who leave early, but for people who buy tickets and don't use them.

Michigan has the power to change their relationship with ticket-holders by 1) allowing people to return tickets to the AD and 2) downgrading Victors Club points for people whose tickets don't scan. The AD can then try to sell those tickets with some sort of rush program. This would be particularly good for Crisler, which often has big swathes of empty seats even for reasonably important games.

The AD continues to focus exclusively on a bottom line that is mostly about how much money they can funnel to the water polo coach and platinum-plate their silver-plated facilities while ignoring the idea that a full, raucous stadium will probably do more for Michigan's wins and losses than the next increment of opulence.

[After THE JUMP: stay tuned for quality Illinois content! Seriously!]

That sounds good! Oh. This tweet has a very Ben Mason twist in it:

UM players say Ben Mason comes off the ball SCREAMING. Cesar Ruiz: "I only went against Ben maybe once or twice, but I remember the reps vividly because there was so much yelling and grunting and I almost didn’t believe it. I was like, 'He’s really yelling at me right now.'" lol

— angelique (@chengelis) March 30, 2019

Literally screaming at people is probably not as good as having an explosive first step. Mason's dalliance at three-tech is a wee bit alarming since he's listed at 254 on the roster. While that's not updated, there's no way he's able to get to reasonable DT weight in a year. It's going to be a rough year at DT.

Harbaugh's having a presser right now in which he's detailing various position groups, and there's an open practice Saturday.

This actually sounds good. Gattis offering glimpses into Michigan practices and his approach to routes:

Some times in order to teach you must show! If you know me you must master the details on 2nd level releases!
Head/eyes/hips ✔️
Inside foot stays in the ground✔️
Re-stem snap the head pin the shoulder on the out✔️#Crafting101
ft: young @MikeSainristil pic.twitter.com/IA92zbJKVL

— Josh Gattis (@Coach_Gattis) April 1, 2019

At the very least he should be a top-tier WR coach, and the idea of a guy who cut his teeth under Joe Moorhead getting Patterson, Black, Collins, and DPJ… could be good.

There's a real easy explanation. Insane article from Dennis Dodd in which a suit working at Virginia Tech looks at college football's attendance problem and concludes that facepaint is the solution:

"I wasn't an athlete. For me, at least, the fundamental [way] how you run an event is the way KISS runs a show."

Wurthman went to describe the anticipation built by the band's introduction hype video on the jumbotron -- KISS walking from dressing room to stage -- and the same old songs that are the foundation of classic rock radio.

Yeah, they rock the house. They could also lead a morning athletic department staff meeting.

"It is," Wurthman concluded, "quintessential sports marketing."

The article is full of people dancing around the real issue, because they are prohibited from realizing what the real issue is. USF's AD:

"The reality is that the national attendance numbers are going to continue to go down," Bulls AD Mike Kelly said, "mainly due to the comparative social and leisure experiences that can now be had outside the football stadium even if those experiences still center around the game itself."

Read that again. This is USF's athletic director saying attendance is going to go down because the in-stadium experience sucks. That's the problem. If a KISS concert had six commercial breaks in its first half hour, people would stop going to KISS concerts.

[After THE JUMP: NBA draft items]

Scrimmage video. Fan-based, so wobbly.

Perverse incentives create perverse results. It is of course completely nuts for Michigan to play Florida in Dallas. The stadium is smaller, the fanbases are far away, and the pageantry of college football is largely replaced with sterile NFL lawyer spaceship accoutrements. But people do it because they get the money.

After Wisconsin scheduled LSU in a goofy neutral-and-neutral situation, Jim Delany issued a memo that the Cedar Times Gazette has unearthed:

Delany’s letter, which was obtained by The Gazette, highlighted the league’s support for neutral sites provided at least half of the series occur within the Big Ten footprint and under the league’s television agreements. Delany wrote an arrangement would be “disapproved” if a Big Ten game was not designated as the home squad in at least half the games or if it was a one-game event that took place outside the league’s television umbrella. …

“We applaud and very much appreciate your efforts in doing so, as this should create value for your teams and fans as well as for our television partners and, therefore, for all Conference members. But please keep in mind the above policies that are important to all of us as we share collectively in the revenue generated by our televised games."

I'm not sure what "disapproved" means here. Could be "we will not let you do this"; could be "we will raise our mighty eyebrow at you but take no other action."

In any case the memo indirectly indicates why neutral site games are popular: the two teams participating can split the TV money between themselves instead of between themselves and Indiana and Purdue and a bunch of other teams that are not in fact playing. When there's a Jerryworld game, ESPN and Jerryworld get the rights and then give home-team-sized slices to both participants. The Big Ten doesn't like that.

The Big Ten can pound sand. Scheduling real games would be so much easier if the teams in them actually saw the benefits without having to leave campus. There is zero reason that a Michigan-Florida home and home should be less lucrative than a neutral site game for the people involved.

Thankfully it sounds like Michigan's trip to Jerryworld in 2017 will be their last, by league decree. It's for the wrong reason, but these days that's all you can hope for.

Hatch things. Good Morning America had him on:

I am going to judge you on your word. Big Ten coaches given one word to describe their teams!

Illinois’ Tim Beckman: Family

"Can you help me find them? I'm not supposed to be out after 7 PM."

Indiana’s Kevin Wilson: Cusp

That's not an adjective. The Hoosiers are not seeming particularly cusp this morn.

Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz: Developmental

Neither is this unless it's followed by "-ly disabled," but I like that Ferentz managed to be even more boring than boring. He's probably in a band called White Toast and that's one of their songs.

Maryland’s Randy Edsall: Hungry

Boring, and not in a fun Ferentz way. Boring in a boring way. Randy Edsall is in a band and their one song is "this is not a band it is just a boring man telling you to eat your vegetables."

Michigan’s Brady Hoke: Together

…now that our first round left tackle is gone

Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio: Committed

…pass interference and still weren't found out

Minnesota’s Jerry Kill: Hungry

This would be boring except for this video of Jerry Kill eating a tiny burrito:

Awwww.

Nebraska’s Bo Pelini: Exciting

Accurate. Nebraska is not great but they are a cat explosion waiting to happen.

Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald: Focused

…until the fourth quarter.

Ohio State’s Urban Meyer: Fast

Accurate, in fact tells you something about desired composition of team, relatively un-boring.

Penn State’s James Franklin: Perseverance

Again with the non-adjectives.

Purdue’s Darrell Hazell: Hungry

Would be boring but in this case I think Darrell Hazell may be saying that his players are literally hungry because they can't figure out which hole to put the food in. "NOT THAT ONE," Darrell Hazell screams for the third time today, "THAT ONE ISN'T EVEN A PART OF YOUR BODY."

Rutgers’ Kyle Flood: Hungry

wait why is this guy even listed

Wisconsin’s Gary Andersen: Youthful

Well… yeah. Joe Namath ain't walking through that door.

Meanwhile, Spurrier said "decent" because hail Spurrier. Mark Richt said "wow" for some reason. I ain't saying that Dave Brandon goes around wearing Mark Richt's skin. But I ain't saying otherwise, neither.

Would you say that your decisions are film and evidence-based? Hoke:

"The evidence for making decisions is on the film," Hoke said Saturday night after the team's public scrimmage. "It's evidence-based. Based on film."

No word on the moisture status of his upper lip.

Another "students are gone" article. This one from USA Today is standard-issue. It never ceases to amaze that athletic directors can say this…

"I don't think it's a targeted demographic problem; I think it's more of a (high-definition) TV, living room, leather couch problem and we have to give the people a reason to come to our live product," Washington athletics director Scott Woodward said. "It is something we're going to have to address and deal with."

…and then marvel at the fact that it's tough to sell tickets that have spiraled upward relative to inflation, nearly tripling since 2000. Surely there is an athletic director out there who can figure out why they might be having attendance problems. Take 2, and then take this other 2, and somehow we have to reach 4.

The article has another pile of lukewarm solutions that aren't going to fix much of anything. One thing that could help: stop treating students like enemies. Michigan gets the vapors when a student says the word "sucks" and tries to drown it out; the ushers in the student section are constantly harassing anyone who does anything that looks even slightly like liability. You've got a choice here: loosen things up and accept the fact that you're going to have slightly higher insurance premiums, or continue to turn off your future customers with adversarial relationships between students and your main point of contact with them.

[Via Get The Picture.]

Italy stuff. The entire first game is available on the tubes. UMHoops has highlights of game #3.

Etc.: MSU WR MacGarrett Kings doesn't even get standard-issue one game DUI suspension. Notre Dame previewed by Paul Myerberg. An overview of where the various NCAA lawsuits stand. The Kessler suit is The Big One. I'm in a sidebar of this ESPN story on the state of Michigan. NOPE.

MVictors interviews Dan Dierdorf. Genuinely Sarcastic comes back for a post about Michigan football that naturally includes a section on Stalingrad. Notre Dame scandal is always a good opportunity to rip Notre Dame.