1:40 to Kickoff on Saturday - Two Pictures, One Problem and One Proposed Solution

Submitted by mGrowOld on

 

These two pictures were taken yesterday approximately 1:40 away from kickoff.  The top picture is the alumni section and the bottom picture is the corresponding student section.  One is full and one is approximately 25% empty.   A lot of people both here on the board and in the stands are asking why this is happening and looking for answers on how to stop it.

Student attendance is a problem that is new (to Michigan anyways) and using positive reinforcement (The Hail program) didn't work.  Negative reinforcement (General Admission) appears to also not be working if the goal is to get students to the games on time.  And make no mistake from my perspective - I WANT the students to show up.  They are loud, they are enthusiastic and they make the entire gameday environment better when they are there in force.  But, I'd rather they were there from the beginning of the game and not midway into the first quarter to make their presence felt.

Here is my proposal on how to remedy this rather new student attendance issue:

  1. Discontinue general admission.  Students have always had seating assigned based on their class and this should not change.  Freshman should get the least desirable seats and Seniors should be rewarded.  It was that way when my dad was there in the late 40's, for me in the late 70's and it should be that way now.  General admission, in my opinion, is a mistake and should be ended.
  2. Stop discounting the price of student tickets.  Students should pay the same rate as the rest of us for the seat and if that is too expensive for the student (or their parents) to afford then they always have the option of not purchasing them. This should weed out those who buy them without truly wanting to use them.
  3. Allow students unfettered rights to buy and sell tickets to anyone that wants to buy them.  The free market will then determine if those seats have value and for how much.  And if they are going to pay the same price as me to buy the seat,  they should have the same freedom I do to sell that ticket for whatever the market says it's worth and to anyone who wishes to buy it.  I sold two extra seats to the Notre Dame game for $300 each.  I sold the same two tickets to Akron for $20 each.  Give the students the same freedom as I have to buy and sell their seat.

We have fantastic students who make the Big House loud and an extremely difficult place to play for opposing teams (just ask Notre Dame).  And I don't believe "punishing" them through general admission will make them show up for games earlier or in greater numbers.  But making them pay the market rate for their seat might make those who arent really sure about football think twice before buying.  And letting them sell that seat to whoever wants it is only fair.

EDIT: GoBlue20111 accurately points out the flaw in my proposal in that it depends on somebody holding mulitiple seats as I do to be able to sell one ticket at a profit while still attending the game.  And students don't hold multiple seats so my idea wouldnt really fix anything for less attractive games.  Mods can leave the post up or take it down if they chose - my idea is flawed and I see that now.  The problem is real though and while my solution may not solve it we are need to acknowledge it exists.

Buzz Your Girlfriend

October 6th, 2013 at 5:01 PM ^

Why can't the AD do something like track the student tickets used (and when they show up) during the non conference schedule and then reissue Big 10 game tickets to reward those that showed up and showed up early?

BlueGoM

October 6th, 2013 at 5:09 PM ^

I think GA is causing the empty seats at the top.   Can't get to the game ontime because you were up late Friday night /missed the bus/ whatever?  Oh well, no hurry, you're just going to be stuck in the nosebleeds anyway.

Raising prices:  that will simply lower the number of students buying tickets.   Granted this was a long time ago but I had to miss out a couple years of football tickets because I simply didn't have the extra money.  Economy being the way it is, they aren't going to shell out even more money.

 

 

bringthewood

October 6th, 2013 at 5:32 PM ^

GA is causing empty seats by not actually being GA.  You are assigned a seat at admission to the stadium and the ushers are forcing students to take assigned seats.  Have you seen the army of ushers in the student section?  Arrive early and get crammed in a low row.  Arrive late and sit where you want.

mGrowOld

October 6th, 2013 at 5:17 PM ^

Current situation: Subsidized pricing with limited ability to sell

Proposed solution: Free market pricing with unfettered ability to sell

I am NOT just prosing raising pricing (although that seems to be the only portion of my proposal people are focusing on).  I am also proposing opening up the students ability to sell those seats to whoever they want for whatever price they will bear.

I'm curious now - does the board feel that this year's home slate would generate a profit or a loss if each ticket was sold for each game to the open market?  Personally I think the seats this year are underpriced as the free market for Notre Dame, Nebraska & Ohio State alone would be worth more than the seat costs.  So if my proposal is to charge people more but a the same time allowing them to sell for more - how exactly is that punitive?

DH16

October 6th, 2013 at 5:23 PM ^

Typical prices per game so far ($40 is face value)

CMU: $40-50

ND: $200 range

Akron: Free - $20

Minnesota: $20-$40

Indiana: will be $20-40

Nebraska: probably same range as above, students don't really care that Nebraska is decent. Last year when NW was ranked those tickets were still $20 resell

Ohio State: lots of these are on the market because students are going home for Thanksgiving. Regardless, they're selling for $150-200

 

 

mGrowOld

October 6th, 2013 at 5:34 PM ^

Hmmm.....

You're right.  I was just thinking that as I read your post.  I do have four seats so my ability to generate a profit on unused seats also allows me to attend games.  But if I only had one seat then I'd have to make a choice to go or sell each game and obvioulsy (as you pointed out) I'd want to attend the "big games" too.

Rats.  Oh well....it was a good discussion.

Double Wolverine

October 6th, 2013 at 6:31 PM ^

While it may be more "fair" to charge students the same prices as everyone else, it would cause a rift in the fan base. Many students have the willingness to pay for tickets but not the ability as they are also covering student loans and many other costs associated with attending U of M. U of M would risk isolating their future fanbase by raising prices. People get hooked of MI football when they attend games and see what it is like, if they don't attand games at school they will be less likely to attend games later on.

DH16

October 6th, 2013 at 5:11 PM ^

1. The section only looks that empty because students are now PACKED into the lower few rows because of general admission. The rest of the stadium was spotty and missing rows of people here or there for that game, but you couldn't tell because the general area was filled. Here, every seat is filled in a row before the next one is filled. The attendance was pathetic, yes, but if students were spread out a little more, it wouldn't have looked nearly as bad. Plus, it filled up alright towards the end. Still pathetic and missing a couple thousand, but not as bad as NW last year.

General admission needs to stay though, because there needs to be some incentive to get there on time. I like the idea of general admission but by classes: separate lines for each student, then at a certain time, maybe 20 minutes before kickoff, then its free reign where any class can sit wherever. This isn't perfect and the times are bad, but it rewards the dedicated seniors AND freshman and punished the non-dedicated fans from all classes.

 

2. Raising prices wouldn't do much. Why? Because the most devoted fans aren't even going to buy tickets. Just because you have money doesn't mean you're going to go to the games. Everyone likes to talk about entitlement here, and that comes with having a lot of money. There are plenty of well-off-enough kids who will not use tickets at any price.

The one thing raising prices WILL do is discourage students from buying tickets and selling them to make a profit, which is RAMPANT. The ND ticket was sold for the cost of student seasons, and the rest are just sold off as additional profit if possible. TONS of tickets are for sale and not sold.

Ticket validation is going away. I was going to make a post about this, but for basketball and hockey NO TICKET VALIDATION IS REQUIRED. You have free reign to sell your ticket to anyone to use, no student ID required. I think this is very interesting: on one hand, it makes it way easier for students to get rid of tickets to games they can't make (not sure if StubHub will take them though, they haven't in the past), but on the other hand it further encourages students to buy season tickets then just flip them for a profit.

3. They used to kind of do this in the past: tickets to "premium games" were ~ $15 more than the others. This year they all say $40 on them although we all know the ND ticket is basically $150 and the rest are $10-25. I just don't see how this fixes any problem.

 

The ONLY solution to the student section is to make the experience so great that students won't miss it (we're dedicated fans on MGoBlog so we're biased in saying that it's already great. No matter how true that is, certain students just don't have the same opinion) by scheduling only top of the line teams, or to instill some attendance policy that forces attendance.

Mabel Pines

October 7th, 2013 at 10:27 AM ^

so I can rant without anyone seeing this.  "Make the experience so great that students won't miss is"??????  what the hell???   They will only come if someone makes it more exciting???  I don't want them there, if that is what they feel.  Welcome to our future leaders of the world.  ugh.  Did not know it had gotten this bad.  I will remind my young children today to never, never be like this.  No one owes you anything.  If you don't like the product as it is, don't buy it.  sickening.

LSAClassOf2000

October 6th, 2013 at 5:13 PM ^

I only point this out because I think it is an interesting approach to the idea of "student section" - some schools actually factor in historic purchasing data and alter the size of the student section to some degree based on demand. I believe Penn State does this, for example, making X number of ticket available each season with a several sales sessions subdivided by class.

I am not sure if they still do this (probably not), but I think Oregon made students apply for tickets by the week, esentially eliminating the idea of a season ticket. I don't think they do that now, but their tickets are supposedly the most expensive in the Pac-12 all the same.

DH16

October 6th, 2013 at 5:17 PM ^

but for big games like ND/MSU/OSU, a ridiculous number of students would apply for tickets.

 

But what if they had something like basketball student ticket policy apply to football, but not with overselling tickets and requiring you to pay for every game regardless of if you get the ticket or not? And the only way to apply for a ticket is to the big games is to have applied and attended all of the other games? Something like that could be interesting.

TheGhostofChappuis

October 6th, 2013 at 5:19 PM ^

So your great solution to this problem is to essentially double student ticket prices?  Huh?  That wouldn't just weed out a few uniterested fans.  It would weed out at least half the section.

Also, attendance really wasn't an issue yesterday. After about 3 minutes into the first quarter, the student section was almost 100% full, which is pretty damn good against a conference bottom-feeder.  I really don't see what major problem is being caused by having 20% of students show up at 11:30 of the first quarter instead of kickoff.

mGrowOld

October 6th, 2013 at 5:23 PM ^

I don't know if my solution is "great" or not - it's simply my proposal as I dont think the GA idea is working nor do I think it's fair.  I like DH16's idea though of having separate lines by class if GA is retained.

 

Section 1

October 6th, 2013 at 5:50 PM ^

"It's a crappy opponent..."

"The students want to party..."

"They are busy with other commitments..."

"Need better wifi..."

"It's not so bad, really..."

"Other universities are just as bad..."

Now, I have already agreed with the point above that GA just makes an already bad situation look even worse. But the real metric is how the rest of the Stadium fills up and stays filled to the ends of games. And how much revenue is lost on students who are given access to purchase seats with no PSD's and at reduced prices. Lazy students are making the game day environment look bad; but even worse, those cheap seats are costing us money.

And let's be clear about this part too; the underlying vitriol in this argument -- at least for me -- springs right out of the old "Up in back!" fight. It's a lot better to be seated in your assigned seat and yelling for your team on a big third down, than to be wandering down Hoover Street, late for the game.

bo_lives

October 6th, 2013 at 6:19 PM ^

The real problem at hand is that for whatever reason, the current generation of students is far less interested in college football compared to everyone else from the fanbase attending games. This wasn't always the case. As indicated by attendance statistics from past years, the stadium was rarely filled to capacity except for marquee games. 

This is just a conjecture on my part, but I'd say I think part of the problem stems from a growing pressure for all students, even those who aren't interested in football whatsoever, to buy tickets. Let's face it, the alumni and members of the public who purchase tickets to games are genuinely interested in going. For many students who end up purchasing tickets, this is definitely not the case.

How do you solve a problem like that? Increasing ticket prices does nothing, as the majority of students have their tickets paid for by their parents anyway. I think one potential approach would be for the University to wage a campaign discouraging incoming students from buying tickets. Not sure you how could effectively do that, however.

bo_lives

October 6th, 2013 at 6:50 PM ^

All I'm saying is that it seems every alumni on the MGoBoard is absoutely convinced that past students were religiously devoted to attending games and the section was always 100% filled before kickoff. I have no way of knowing whether this is actually the case, but I do know that I have many friends today who are rather lackadaisical about going to games. This is not a matter of laziness but rather a genuine disinterest in football games.

bo_lives

October 6th, 2013 at 10:26 PM ^

But as it stands the majority on this blog, along with the AD admins, seem unwilling to stop whining about it (which seems to be your preferred solution as well as mine).

So far, the AD has introduced HAIL and GA, both of which were executed with striking incompetency and neither of which had any effect (actually, as people have pointed out, GA makes the student section less pleasant to look at).

Everyone seems to be ignoring the root of the problem, which is that students who place football at the bottom of their priority list are buying tickets because that's just what you do when you go to Michigan.

It's definitely not an easy problem to solve. Most of the solutions suggested by people on this board amount to "tell the students to stop being so lazy." Though decreasing the amount of student tickets sold is, I would say, a terrible way to deal with this, it would certainly be the simplest, most efficient way to get rid of the vast swaths of empty seats we see at gametime.

Section 1

October 6th, 2013 at 9:13 PM ^

  1. We had a lot more non-televised games.  And consequently, we had a lot of 1:30 kickoff times.
  2. They were cool about letting us party in the Stadium.  There was a light blue cloud that hung over much of Section 28.  And there were lots of wine bottles all around.  Imagine that today.
  3. We really did have a lot of good teams, playing lots of good opponents.
  4. You are correct; the Stadium was not filling up consistently.  So the poor student showing as fans in 2013 is bad only in comparison to alumni and other fans in 2013; there should be no direct comparison to students in earlier decades.  Of course, the alumni and other fan showing in 2013 is far better than in past decades; quality Michigan football tickets, with their attached PSD's, are a lot more dear than back in the 60's and 70's when there were no such demands on all season ticket holders (at least not officially).  People nowadays are paying more (even adjusted for inflation) and treating the privilege with more care, it would seem.

Check out some numbers from a great and fairly typical year, 1973:

 

Date Time Opponent# Rank# Site TV Result Attendance
September 15, 1973   at Iowa #5/NA Kinnick StadiumIowa City, IA   W 31–7   52,105
September 22, 1973   Stanford* #5/6 Michigan StadiumAnn Arbor, MI   W 47–10   80,177
September 29, 1973   Navy* #4/4 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   W 14–0   88,042
October 6, 1973   Oregon* #5/5 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   W 24–0   81,113
October 13, 1973   at Michigan State #5/4 Spartan StadiumEast Lansing, MI   W 21–0   78,263
October 20, 1973   Wisconsindagger #4/4 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   W 35–6   87,723
October 27, 1973   at Minnesota #4/4 Memorial StadiumMinneapolis, MN   W 34–7   44,435
October 27, 1973   Indiana #4/4 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   W 49–13   76,432
November 10, 1973   Illinois #4/4 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   W 21–6   76,461
November 17, 1973   at Purdue #4/4 Ross–Ade StadiumWest Lafayette, IN   W 34–9   56,485
November 24, 1973   #1/1 Ohio State #4/4 Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI   T 10–10   105,223
 

 

Section 1

October 7th, 2013 at 11:33 AM ^

I don't want to have to complile the list of all of the 1970's out of conference opponents again.

In general, we had lots of games with schools like Stanford, Oregon, Washington (and it has been pointed out that Oregon in the 1970's was not like the Oregon of the 21st century) and also a series of home games with Navy, and a smattering of games with the likes of Missouri (which demolished Bo's 1969 team in Ann Arbor).  We also saw South Carolina (with Heisman winner George Rogers) in Ann Arbor and lost to them.

Your assertion that "Most of the big name schools Michigan played in the 70s at home were garbage" is itself a garbage comment.  Think about what you wrote; we were playing big name schools as out of conference opponents in the 1970's!  Unlike some of the no-name shools we have seen in the 21st century.  We played few if any MAC opponents in the 1970's.  And we played more of our own conference opponents then in a shorter season ( with no bye weeks), than we do now.

Wendyk5

October 6th, 2013 at 5:21 PM ^

"Well, it was Minnesota, so that explains the empty seats." 

That idea is odd to me. If you look at our schedule, half the games could garner that same sentiment. When I was a student, we filled up that section pretty much before the game started whether it was Minnesota or Central Michigan or Ohio State. What's wrong with kids these days? (And I guess I must put the /s here, even though the sarcasm should be obvious) 

bo_lives

October 6th, 2013 at 6:33 PM ^

Along with the increase in the number of actual games played. In the past, there was a sentiment that every game mattered. Today, we all know that's not the case. Games against Akron and UMass are scheduled for money purposes only. Then people start wondering what the difference is between Minnesota and Akron, and suddenly half the schedule looks meaningless.

Now, this doesn't matter if you're a diehard, but due to Michigan's rampant success in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the number of diehards in the alumi base and the general public has increased dramatically. However, the number of diehards in the student population has probably decreased.

bringthewood

October 6th, 2013 at 5:25 PM ^

There is no GA seating as you are assigned a seat at entry to the stadium (the ushers hand you a ticket).  Get there early and end up in row 10.

You actually get crappy seats by showing up too early.  For crappy games the new policy actually encourages late arrival so you can get seats higher up!  Genetal admission seating (first come first serve) would be much better as you could choose your seat.  This would alievate the blank spots and would force late arrivals to have to find a seat.

As it is now arrive early, get crammed in with other students in low rows as the ushers are enforcing you sitting in the seat on your ticket, or arrive late and get a seat row 50 or higher. 

It's the implementation of GA that sucks.

bringthewood

October 6th, 2013 at 5:46 PM ^

I know.  I thought that was how it would work.  I think if they used first come first served GA seating the student section would look much more filled that it is now.  I know many students are pissed by arriving early and being forced into poor seats.  For those few hundred that want to be sit in the first 5 rows that is great but it sucks for everyone else.

Think if every section of the stadium was forced into filling every seat, the top rows for games like Minnesota would be empty but it's masked by having empty seats through the section.  

The way they are seating the students now makes any no shows obvious.

lonewolf371

October 6th, 2013 at 5:33 PM ^

Make it so only the rich students can attend. I'm sure they're the ones arriving on time. You do realize most students just ask their parents for money and thus aren't that attached to it?

DirkMcGurk

October 6th, 2013 at 5:41 PM ^

Dude these are college kids who are off campus pregaming. Most aren't going to leave way early to wait to get in. They then all arrive at a similar time and causes a back log. Most said within minutes of the game start it was full, so leave this tired subject to die.

champ009kd

October 6th, 2013 at 5:42 PM ^

Why do members of the mGoBoard waste their time on this? Where are the students?: Briskly walking in from tailgate lots/frat partys where hot girls are plentiful and Natty lights flow like the River Nile.

This is a problem at many institutions of high learning. This being "Michigan Forgodsakes" is not going to change things.  

GGV

October 6th, 2013 at 5:49 PM ^

 

I like the idea of letting students sell their own tickets if they want to miss a game.  I used to often pick up a spare student section ticket back in the day for face value on the walk from campus.  I don’t know why the athletic department would be afraid of that...
 
I think the problem may have started about 10 years ago when costs started to make big-time college football less of a family friendly event.  Families couldn’t afford to maintain blocks of 4 tickets...kids as a result didn’t get exposed to Michigan Football first hand as those of us did back in the 70‘s.
 
Part of the solution may be to cut the student section by 75% or more and take those seats to create an affordable  “family section” specifically for fans with school-age kids.
Teach them young how to attend games.  Hell, take it a step further and start a family tailgating area with free parking up on north campus and bus them down to the games. Have the Glee Clubs (men and women) teach the kids Michigan songs at the location.
 
It might take 10 years to fix however... 

GGV

October 6th, 2013 at 9:12 PM ^

 

Mostly it’s about instilling the habit of going to games or coming to understand the excitement of being at such an event.
 
Also, how to enjoy the event as opposed to sitting at home and watching it on TV.
 
All I keep hearing is that the students would rather drink and hit on each other at parties...that tells me they don’t understand HOW to go to games and enjoy them.