HAIL: Fail?

If you're so easily bribable that a t-shirt is all it takes to get you in the stadium on time, you were probably already going to be in the stadium on time.

I agree 100%. My idea of a good system would be one that is

A) Sport specific (i.e. if I'm a football fan, women's volleyball attendence doesn't matter to me)

B) Directly affecting on the next year's tickets. This is a reward literally everyone who goes to football games is concerned about. 

So why not just scan tickets of football fans as they enter, and give out the next year's tickets based on attendence? If you're going to football games in the first place it's a reward that you will care about, it's easily executable, and it rewards the bigger fans. Instead, we'll have the same amount of people showing up late, but some people will also go to a women's basketball game and do homework. It just seemed like such a simple problem to adress...

How many MBA's did it take to come up with this incentive system?  Very few people will be incentivized to change their behavior (as Brian noted) -- it's like an Espresso Royale loyalty stamp card that needs 40 stamps to get a free coffee refill.

The 100 dollars sounds neat, but in order to get it you have to put 50 bucks into a new checking account and wait two months. So that's not really worth it.

5 dollars in blue bucks/some coupons isn't really that great.

But the Climalite shirt + bag is about 40 dollars worth of merchandise, so that's pretty good.

The only way is to have showing up related to future ticket acquisition and seating. The rewards as so small I would show up early for the games and not even bother to check in, because why waste time doing that for that stuff when you can be watching warm ups, the band, etc.

But you're wrong about  "painfully assembled acronym" - those can be really cool.

They seem to be going pretty far to avoid the reward scheme most of us seem to want. Is recording the time scanned not currently a capability? That seems unlikely, because they do that for basketball right? (Asking because I never got basketball tickets.)

Also, overcrowded data networks before kickoff could make this a pain. People using the location spoofer could have a higher success rate.

Just tell the students that the game times are actually 11:40 a.m. or 3:10 p.m.  Oh, you don't think that will work?  I'd say it probably would have about as good a chance at success as the HAIL idea has. 

Does this include Michigan Daily Photographers? If I'm supposed to be at a game 20 minutes early anyways, can I still get points?

Have these people ever tried to access the internet from their phone from Michigan Stadium? Tweeting or facebook-ing is an exercise in luck and patience, at least with AT&T. Why can't they just use ticket scans like every other student section in the country? That would be harder to cheat, more accurate, more data, and more reliable.

I not totally up on current robot anatomy and engineering, but shouldn't the sharpener part be a little lower?

Shamon, B. The goal was to develop a program; not to, you know, solve the (or even a) problem.

How about -- "If you're not in your see by 10 minutes before kickoff we'll give away your seat to those in a standby queue outside the stadium."

Kinda like going standby for a flight ... maybe you get in, maybe you don't.

The highest point earner will receive recognition during a 2013 home football game.

And then is escorted out of the stadium for failing to maintain a 2.0 GPA 2 successive semesters?

if for no other reason than it shows the athletic dept. is aware that there is a problem. After this setup enivitably fails to improve the football situation, there hopefully will be revised (better) versions coming for the next few seasons.

The student section for basketball is already first-come, first serve. Extend it to football. If you want to show up halfway through the first quarter, enjoy the view from row 80. If you want to slap Denard high-five after he scampers for the game winning TD against State, camp out the night before or whatever.

It might not make more students come to games early, but neither will HAIL. At least you'll be guaranteed that the loudest and most interested fans will be closest to the field.

Silly plan is silly.   Also:

"The highest point earner will receive recognition"

as either being a part time student or having a really, really easy major.

It still disturbs me greatly that we need a loyalty/reward system just to get students to the game on time.

By the way, can someone explain the card trick?  Was that the red, white and blue cards for the Nebraska game?  I saw rocket man.     

As Brian said, location spoofers will render this useless.  Just walk by the different venues you want to "attend", pull their GPS coords, then set reminders in your calendar to check in.  You can now check in to football games and then go play another game of beer pong.  Or you can fake ever having attended any lesser sport where all you have to do is flash ID to get in.  Some of those gifts are at the level where they aren't worth showing up to the game, but they're worth spending 5 minutes to spoof a checkin.  

If you want the stadium filled up for the football game, make it worthwhile to checkin.  The white hairs are hauling ass to get there 40 minutes early so they can see the train cheer and all this stuff I never heard of.  If you want the students in there early give them a show or something to see.