Sad Picture at Stadium Just Before Kickoff

Submitted by winterblue75 on

courtesy of @mvictors Twitter

snarling wolverine

September 15th, 2013 at 11:01 AM ^

Not directly, no, but it's probably harder for the team to get fired up when it sees that its peers in the student section aren't there - and probably a lot less intimidating for the opposing team.  If we want our team to win at home, we've got to do our part to bring the homefield advantage.

 

 

DCAlum

September 15th, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^

They were worth approximately $0. I knew many people who couldn't find someone to just take them off their hands.



I agree with you in general, but this was a game that many students didn't care about at all. According to the friend I sold my ticket to (out of town this weekend, unfortunately), it was louder in there during the fourth quarter than it was for nd last week, so that's a decent sign.

goblue7612

September 15th, 2013 at 11:36 AM ^

Read what the guy wrote. He was out of town this weekend. He couldn't hang around the stadium to get his $10. I know for a fact that this ticket was tough to give away. I couldn't give away a student ticket, and tried all of the people I know.

It has never been a problem to give away student tickets in years past, as it was desirable to sit in the student section. With general admission, it no longer is, and compounds the problem of the student section looking empty.

BILG

September 14th, 2013 at 9:54 PM ^

our shitty entitled fanbase doesn't deserve to bitch about the team's shitty effort today.  Not like the crowd brought much to table either.  Pathetic.  However, I will commence bitching because, fuck...it's Akron.

andrewG

September 14th, 2013 at 11:01 PM ^

Were you there? Because I was and I was cheering as loud as I could. And so was everyone around me in the student section. There may be a lot of empty seats, but there's also a lot of us who do show up and bring our A game as a fan every week.

M-Dog

September 14th, 2013 at 10:55 PM ^

For a noon game against Akron on a beautiful day when it would be just as well to continue tailgating/pre-gaming, the stadium wound up being pretty ful.  Including the student section.  So credit where it is due.

Note to the AD:  With the crappy home schdule we have next year, DO NOT schedule any noon kickoff games.

 

M-Dog

September 14th, 2013 at 11:01 PM ^

GA giveth and GA taketh away.  

GA will get the lower rows of seats filled by the diehards, which it did even for Akron.  But for the rest of the students, if you are not going to get a prime seat, then what difference does it make when you show up?

Al GA does is move the empty seats around.  Instead of being sprinkled around the entire student section, they are now concentrated in the mid and upper rows. 

The solution is to not combine crappy opponents with noon starts.

 

 

Rabbit21

September 14th, 2013 at 11:23 PM ^

Yep, couldn't agree more.  Noon games and restricting student access to one gate is just BEGGING for a giant bottleneck to develop.  Combine that with a noon start and a desire to hang out and tailgate as much as possible and the athleitc department is basically begging for this picture.

MMB95

September 15th, 2013 at 10:24 AM ^

If it were normal assigned seating and not GA, it would have never looked this bad because they would have been dispersed throughout the whole section instead of shoved down to the bottom.  GA sucks for big games in that the students have to get there ridiulously early and then aren't even guaranteed a seat since they oversell, and it sucks for the cupcake games because you end up with a crappy looking section during the first quarter.

Section 1

September 15th, 2013 at 12:36 PM ^

I think you make a valid point.

And I will not get into the business of defending GA.  I never understood the whole idea.

But the comparison was stark, and devastating for the notion that students are somehow superior fans to the patrons in the rest of the Stadium.

Nowhere else in the Stadium was it half-empty at kickoff, no matter how spread out any empty seats appeared.  I think it is giving the student sections the benefit of the doubt, to suggest that they were half empty.  They were at least 60% empty when the football team ran under the banner.

Double Wolverine

September 15th, 2013 at 1:31 PM ^

GA was supposed to solve that problem and get people to games early. For the marquee games it does seem to work; the student section for ND was quite full 30 min before kickoff something that wasn't the case in years past. For the less desirable games at noon there will always be issues getting students up early and out the door on time. At least GA rewards those who do show up early. They had close up seats to an exciting finish, albeit unexpected.

Section 1

September 15th, 2013 at 1:51 PM ^

...the students showed up in force and on time for the first UTL.

It's not GA, or No-GA, as far as I can see.

It is that students do an unusually bad job of being on time for noon games, and are only slightly better for 3:30 games.

One might well think that students would know how to use the alarm clock app on their iPhone 5's.  Can't Siri wake everybody up on time?

NiMRODPi

September 14th, 2013 at 10:21 PM ^

You're absolutely right.

For me personally though, I hate these early season games. Nothing to gain, everything to lose. Either we get an App St. situation, which I was at. Or we get today, which feels just as bad, or we get CMU where all I do is scrutinize the entire preformance despite the wallop.

Really, my complaint is about something larger which is scheduling better games, win-loss record be damned. You get more big games I assure you the student section isn't so damn empty.

jmblue

September 14th, 2013 at 11:48 PM ^

I wouldn't say there's nothing to gain.  If your team takes care of business against someone like Akron, you can start pulling your starters and getting reserves valuable game experience, as we did in the CMU game.  That helps to build depth and keeps your reserves motivated in practice, knowing there's a chance they might get in.  Every school will schedule a few teams like this.  

 

 

inthebluelot

September 15th, 2013 at 6:27 PM ^

First of all, people don't wanna see back-ups play unless they deserve to be on the
Field, especially when you drive 2 hours and spend thousands of dollars for your season tix to support the program. Second, we play in a conference with a ton of below average teams. With that said, you shouldn't be scheduling these shit teams and expect your program to compete at an Elite level with the best teams in the country. Sure, Alabama and LSU play a cupcake or two, but their other 10 games are against legit teams in conference. Michigan will face 1 quality, nationally relevant program the rest of the season, and right now, they are way better than we are. You've gotta schedule up if you want to compete for championships.

Don

September 14th, 2013 at 10:21 PM ^

I've believed since before the GA decision was made that the only effective solution is to reduce the student ticket allotment. It's abundantly clear that only a portion of those students who have tickets are enthusiastic enough to show up at kickoff with any kind of regularity.

The people who should be mad are the players on the team, but they've got bigger things to worry about right now.

rob6reid

September 14th, 2013 at 10:29 PM ^

The players that are getting tens of thousands of dollars a year to go here for free should be mad? They get huge scholarships and are expected to not crap the bed against akron. Sorry, some students have enough with work, projects, essays, and presentations on their plates to be "enthusiastic" for a garbage games. Especially when we arent getting full ride scholarships to go here. Right. Blame DB for scheduling garbage games. But dont blame the students. I dont think you realize how many students come here largely because of the football games.

M-Wolverine

September 14th, 2013 at 10:41 PM ^

Someday you'll have a job and family responsibility and REAL work that doesn't allow you to drink yourself silly multiple times a week. Save the woe is me garbage; you'll never have it this good again.

And for that free ride those players are doing all the work you do, plus a full time job that physically beats the hell out of them, all the while listening to whining from thousands of people who couldn't handle a week of what they do.

rob6reid

September 14th, 2013 at 11:13 PM ^

 

Well that funny because there have been exactly 0 weekends where I have 'drank myself silly'. I dont drink. But go ahead and just make random, reckless assumptions. That’s cool. I put far more than 40 hours/week into school and extracurriculars, so I'm not sure what constitutes as 'real'.

I know for a fact the vast majority of football players DO NOT 'do all the work that I do'. That’s a laughable statement. They get access to academic support and tutoring available to no one else. They also have 5 years to play 4, so they do this while often taking 12 credits/semester. And those 12 credits will most likely go towards their General Studies or Kinesiology degree. I'm not saying that all the football players are doing this. Some are quite impressive students and I respect what they are able to do. But don't’ act like the football players are sweating it out in Orgo or Calc 3, like your average student.