Speaking of fireworks, I'm glad to hear Dave Rexroth is good spirits.
but for Miami they just hired me to play with steel wool at the 50 yard line for 20 minutes or so.
Fireworks will occur after the games. My assumption is that these fireworks will accompany the band's halftime shows.
why this should get negged. Perhaps the neg voter can enlighten us.
at least for the Miami game, there will be something of interest.....maybe they will surprise everyone with t-shirt gunz and 'FREE PEEZA!' too? /s
It is hard to separate this idea from other gameday changes and looking at them in context, they don't come off so well. It just seems weird that the AD keeps doing everything in their power to make the gameday experience a mass appeal, genericized sporting event, besides just scheduling better opponents. To me most of what the AD has done (I blame the whole department since it would seem a group effort, though certainly under Brandon's leadership) to change gameday pushes it towards being a commodity and reduces what was once a very unique, connected and personal experience.
I think the current state of the ticket sales is not necessarily going to get fixed just by winning. Yes, there will be those that come back when the on-the-field product is more engaging, but I think there could possibly be a much longer term dynamic at work that is more on a generational level and less on a seasonal one. Both my parents went to Michigan and I grew up with season tickets and went to nearly every home game. We always met up with other families, always played football on the lawn of the pre-party, post-party, golf course and often at half-time/3rd/4th quarter on the grass outside the stadium when we would be up 28 on Duke or whomever. Part of the day was always the band, the stadium environment, the crowd experience (I don't care what anyone says, the stadium was way louder back then, I remember opposing QBs often had to TO out of a play b/c they couldn't hear).
I live in California now, so I don't usually get back for more than one game per year, but out of the group of other alumni families I used to go to games with, very few still get that same experience. Some can no longer afford the tickets outright, some go but can only bring kids 1-2 times per year, others just don't go anymore because it is so commercialized and they loathe piped in music and such. I went to UM, as did my brother and sister and this is very true for them and many of my friends from school that still live in Michigan....very few of them can or are able to bring kids or multiple kids to a game.
We went from being a program with a waiting list for season tickets where people sat in the same place and knew most of the people in the seats around them, to one that pretty only values how much cash you can pony up and are now having to contrive ticket packages and extended buying windows to even sell-out. That is an alarming trend, even from a purely business viewpoint. In essence, there is a focus on a quarter-by-quarter analysis of revenue and little, if any, view toward the long term, which is something I call CEO-itis and is I think one of the major problems plaguing our economy today, but I digress.
What happens when there are no longer kids that grew up going to games? Will there even be the concept of tradition? Will there be any sense of belonging to an ideal, a program, a connection to the team beyond the results and purchase of licensed goods?
I'm not anti-modernization...I wholly supported the luxury boxes, stadium enhancements, scoreboards, etc., but I do think there needs to be a tempered, responsible and perhaps more democratic approach to what the gameday experience entails. Clearly no one is asking the ticketholders or students what they want.
I'm only 46, so this is not a 'get off my lawn' or 'I remember when candy bars were only a nickel!' argument I'm making, nor am I naive to the pressures of running an organization, I run a start-up in Silicon Valley that does business on three continents, so I understand that perhaps some compromise is required, but we seem to be on a crash course with ads in the stadium, t-shirt gunz and all manner of pimping out the fan experience and it makes me very sad. For the record, I loathe professional sporting events....for just that reason...paying top-dollar to be availed at every second by annoying promos, over-priced concessions, rotating ad spots, organ-music led cheers at literally every break in the action, as if the worst thing that could happen would be you could actually turn and talk to the people you came with or those sitting next to you. I'll pass. I attribute this completely to going to Michigan games growing up and the complete lack of all these things being present.
Every year I consider which games I'm going to bring my 9 year old son back to M for and there will be a point where just going to see a 49er or Giants game will be on the same par and we may stop going...I don't know. I hope not.
Ok...tl:dr I know.
However, I have a feeling the input by others within the AD often carries little weight with Dave Brandon. I mean, there had to be plenty of people who didn't think adding WiFi to the stadium was going to have a big impact on attendance, yet it seemed like DB was quite resolute on that idea anyway.
I will soon be priced out of my family held season tickets of 41 years.
Everything you said is right on the money for me.
Very well stated response to what the "Michigan Football Experience" has evolved into. I honestly can't understand why so many downvotes to what you wrote.
I only wish Brandon himself could read what you wrote and somehow understand where you're coming from. I don't think, though, that he is the type that is willing to listen to anybody else and their opinion, regardless of how well grounded and thought-out it might be; instead, his way seems to be (in his mind) the only way.
I've had season tickets since '77, sat in the same seats since '80, and have made friends along the way just by being in those seats. We tailgate weekly with another party who got seats in our section some 20 seasons ago, 3 rows down, and several others in our section stop by at least occasionally at our tailgate, even folks who no longer have season tickets have been known to look us up on game day.
Just last Friday, by sheer dumb luck I ran into one of the ushers from our section (he's worked that entrance for about 15 seasons now and has stopped by at AA G&O for our tailgate a few times) and talked to him for several minutes---and made plans for him to stop for a sandwich, snack and softdrink for the home opener tailgate. Believe it or not, the "dumb luck" about our chance meeting was that it happened at a Meijer some 160 miles from Ann Arbor when he was here in town for a wedding, some 120 miles from his home.
Back on point here, the Michigan Stadium experience has long been one of constant enjoyment without all the bells and whistles. I, too, am not opposed to change and recognize the need for the upgrades to the Big House. Times change, technology changes, people change, so much of the modernization has been a good thing. Fireworks? No problem, I'll enjoy that too. And I'm in my late 50's, definitely approaching the "get off my lawn" age demographic that we laugh about here.
It's just the mindset that DB and his entire AD seems to go by that bothers me, a mindset that seems to suggest that we're incapable of finding enjoyment unless it's force fed on us; that we just can't recognize fun unless it's blasted directly at us as we're being informed by them that it is a fun thing and we better enjoy it.
Not exactly why you would get downvoted for writing about your your personal experience either, perhaps someone who downvoted might have the huevos to articulate their rationale for doing so (though I doubt it)?
My personal opinion, based on zero inside information and only based on his actions and what I would deem to be their justification, is that he runs the department purely like a business (hence his constant refrence to Michigan as a 'brand' which it is not...Dominoes is a brand) without any regard for tradition or the actual tastes of the consumers at hand and that his goal would be to transform the whole experience into one that is a commodity that no longer depends on the whims and tastes of the core fan base and rather caters to 110,000 random ticket buyers each week who have zero inerest in what happened even a few weeks/years back or what happens the next week/years.
I think Brandon will be on to his next gig in a fairly short amoutjn of time and it would appear to me that his main goal would be to point to his record and use terms like 'maximized' and 'optimized' in relation to profits and such and that enhanced game experience in terms of tradtion or consumer loyalty won't be part of that equation.
There's no place for this so-called band at minor league baseball park PNC Stadium on Saturdays anymore! Keep up with the times, bro!
Based on the music we get treated to during games I think these guys are:
Just win baby... Solves everything.
I'd be a lot happier. Bread and Circuses Brandon seems to have other plans.
What's not to like about fireworks?
And I love sitting back with my loved ones and watching a fireworks display every time I go to a single A baseball game.
This is NOT Michigan
Fire Dave Brandon
enough after the Miami game?
My only issue is if they're want people to be entertained, they are ignoring the real issue: The stupid, long, TV timeouts.
It'd be nice to see just one AD stand up to the networks and say "Nope, cut the timouts down. And still give us the same money. Because we are the show and we havve the power."
Only one sporting organization can get away with that, Augusta National Golf Club. And that's because, for that weekend, they really are the only interesting game in town.
Its something minor league baseball does to attrack fans, is this something that Michigan needs? I love, love fireworks, don't get me wrong. But this makes me think of something that Bo would be shaking his head at were he still around.
I don't really like Sean Baligian, but I was listing to him on ESPN radio over here in W.Michigan and I think he made a good point. The letter about fireworks states "the event production". It used to be that the production was the product on the field, not stuff like this.
If we could get back to winning I think people would care less about this, whether it is the "michigan way" or not.
Leaders and best
If anything, the skywriter pilot is going to be in for a real scare when those things go up.
#WOWFactor
The AD is not a legitimate scapegoat for on-field failures. Complaints regarding this commercialization, all the revenue from which gets fed into other non revenue sports, is asinine.
We, as a fan base, need to grow up a bit. Just my two cents.
Spoke to a regent today who is absolutely against this nonsense. No idea if that view is representative of the group.