Stadium Experience
A couple of thoughts from the in stadium experience today.
- The new scoreboards are nice. Big, easy to see picture.
- The scrolling of out of town scores was nice, but it oddly seemed to much more heavily show games from Thursday or Friday night or games that had yet to start. I didn't see a TCU / Colorado score until the 4th quarter
- The lack of in game replays continues to be hard to understand. Even when Michigan scores a touchdown they don't seem to show a replay. Just straight to the next promotion or crowd shots. Lots and lots and lots of crowd shots.
- It's interesting that the red hat guy now has a clock / timer. In the first half the breaks seemed to be 2:30. In the second half they varied between 2:40, 2:45, and 2:50.
- They gave ECU a loooong time to get into the tunnel at halftime. I did notice that they didn't start the 20:00 timer until they let Michigan in though.
Anyone else notice anything interesting?
September 2nd, 2023 at 6:57 PM ^
Wasn’t there, but the scoreboards looked great on TV. They weren’t just big, but actually looked like you could watch them clearly through the TV broadcast itself when they showed them.
The crowd shots are overdone every year it feels. It’s cool for the pre-game and at dead periods, but they rely on it a lotttt.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:00 PM ^
It was hot
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:01 PM ^
One other thing. The sound system was bad. Felt worse than previous year. Kind of garbled and not well equalized.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:33 PM ^
Couldn't agree with this more. The sound was terrible, particularly in the first half. The piped in music is especially embarrassing when it doesn't work properly. And there was that one time when the ref's whistle came over the speaker system.
September 3rd, 2023 at 9:34 AM ^
Agree strongly (although the ref's whistle is the ref's fault--he did not turn off his microphone before blowing the whistle).
Bigger issue with the referee is that his microphone didn't work at all for most of the first half, or it did work and was not amplified at all--that's ok, I guess, but when that happens the PA announcer needs to announce what the calls are from the ref's signals so everybody on the east side of the stadium knows what penalties were called.
September 2nd, 2023 at 8:21 PM ^
maybe Carl's hair was bumping into the mic
September 3rd, 2023 at 12:04 PM ^
This is under-appreciated.
September 2nd, 2023 at 8:22 PM ^
The bass was booming, but you couldn't hear anyone's voice through the speakers.
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:07 PM ^
The refs whistle was ridiculously loud one time.
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:47 AM ^
He forgot to turn off his mic. It was unpleasant... everyone yelped.
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:49 AM ^
Sound synched to the new screens was especially bad but even the PA was unintelligible or cutting out most of the time. Very disappointing.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:02 PM ^
Scoreboards are great, but the sides (stats and scores)take up too much space. They should show the out of town scores only during breaks in my opinion.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:03 PM ^
Yes! And put the timer for tv back on the scoreboard. The red hat holding the timer kept turning it so I couldn’t always see how much time was left. Everyone can see a scoreboard though.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:41 PM ^
We were saying the same thing. The two outer columns could shrink by half and would still be plenty legible
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:53 AM ^
The fonts were giant. You could be legally blind and still see the numbers. Shrink them and add more stats instead of paging through them. But you know what Warde and team care little about what fans think.
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:52 PM ^
I miss having the passing and rushing yardage separated out. I’d rather see that than penalty yardage. But with a scoreboard that big, I think we can have both.
September 3rd, 2023 at 7:00 AM ^
Agree with this, miss the passing and rushing yardage.
also, I found that lots of the replay footage was choppy and would jump. I wasn’t a fan of the new graphics that they displayed
September 3rd, 2023 at 7:30 AM ^
I agree with this. The replays were bad. Surely the new boards have good processing power.
September 3rd, 2023 at 7:19 AM ^
Agree
put all the stats on the screen at once, really not that hard
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:02 PM ^
Out of town scoreboard annoyed me. All the yellow on the scoreboard was harder to see. I can’t stand when they show things like the band and then take away a big chunk of the screen with just a floating M on it. Use the whole screen!
I did notice the tunnel thing and it also annoyed me only because there has only been one confirmed case of violence in 100 years.
this post is negative. Overall had a great time, very impressed by JJ and it was wonderful to be back in the Big House.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:10 PM ^
The tunnel thing, like the sad field goal, was influenced by James Franklin, not MSU. (He complained about his players throwing their PB&Js at Michigan).
September 2nd, 2023 at 8:34 PM ^
I mean yeah. Franklin brought it up and made comments but MSU was by far the bigger spectacle of a story. I notice that came after PSU and nothing changed until after MSU.
September 3rd, 2023 at 12:38 AM ^
No, that's what I'm saying: Frames whined about it after the PSU game, and then I noticed it during the MSU game. It was somewhat more subtle, but I distinctly recall an official racing to get ahead of Michigan and block their tunnel access until MSU had gotten completely inside. I recall finding it offensive that they would listen to that clown and assume that Michigan players were all violent sociopaths who couldn't be trusted around their gentle, ewe-like opponents.
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:53 AM ^
True. They did make an effort to separate them at MSU.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:03 PM ^
I didn’t get a to a game last year so it’s been a while but I did noticed the new audio system was crackling quite a bit which didn’t sound good at all.
Also, not sure what happened but they wouldn’t let my wife in with her small purse and made her go to check bags or otherwise she could “dump” it.
Overall, it was a boring game experience but perfect for my 10/13 yr old boys to see for their first time.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:37 PM ^
Bags and purses, even small ones, are not allowed. Feel like it's been that way for a while.
https://mgoblue.com/sports/2022/8/23/michigan-stadium-football-information
Bag policy
Bags are not allowed inside Michigan Stadium. This includes fanny packs and purses.
September 2nd, 2023 at 8:35 PM ^
In my mind that’s been the policy since 9/11.
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:43 PM ^
Yep. I think it's been that long. And there are posts and emails and texts and reminders about it to everyone who might *possibly* have a ticket to a game. I have been with people who had to throw away the mesh bag their rain poncho came in...the bag prohibition is serious.
September 2nd, 2023 at 11:31 PM ^
Fanny packs can't melt steel beams.
September 3rd, 2023 at 6:59 AM ^
On the real tho, when does the Big House get metal detectors? Sad that I’m even asking
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:03 AM ^
Hopefully never
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:03 PM ^
I didn’t get a to a game last year so it’s been a while but I did noticed the new audio system was crackling quite a bit which didn’t sound good at all.
Also, not sure what happened but they wouldn’t let my wife in with her small purse and made her go to check bags or otherwise she could “dump” it.
Overall, it was a boring game experience but perfect for my 10/13 yr old boys to see for their first time.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:06 PM ^
Oops. Hit save twice apparently!
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:15 PM ^
The sound in the stadium still sucks ass. All that money on scoreboards and no improvment to a lousy five 1947 loudspeakers?
September 2nd, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
I am a 1947 loudspeaker.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:16 PM ^
The other-game scores section annoyed the hell out of me. They spent 85% of the time showing either 1) scores from previous days (which we already knew before we entered the stadium, and if we didn't we certainly knew them by kickoff because they kept showing the same scores over and over) or 2) kickoff times of future games (ditto). They showed the score of the Colorado-TCU game maybe twice during the entire 3.3 hour game.
Because of the lack of wifi in the stadium, the scores that fans want to see are games happening right now. Furthermore, the biggest games of the day (such as Colorado-TCU) should be shown most often, not least often.
I'd like to contact someone in the U-M athletic department about this, but I have no idea where to start. Anyone have any ideas about who to contact?
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:04 PM ^
I was saying the same thing to those sitting around us. What is the score of the TCU/ CU game? They never showed it on the scoreboard.
Like you said they had last week's scores of Notre Dame over Navy and USC over San Jose State up there the whole game. I kept wondering why they were putting up scores from last week? Idiotic. Had a great time, but the out of town scoreboard updating needs some work.
September 4th, 2023 at 8:48 PM ^
Staffers probably can’t get wifi either and thus cannot update the scores. .
September 3rd, 2023 at 9:00 AM ^
As far as I can tell from previous attempts that email address is not actually monitored, I have never gotten any responses to polite questions I have asked. Maybe the only good thing about Dave Brandon was he would answer emails.
September 3rd, 2023 at 9:41 AM ^
That ended up being the absolute best thing ever about David Brandon...which is probably why Warde Manuel does not monitor/respond.
September 3rd, 2023 at 8:58 AM ^
This is my opinion as well. No wifi, no cell service so I cannot check the scores myself. I would pay extra for gameday wifi. But no, they just focus on that jackass on the field trying to pump the crowd up and ginormous screens that cannot show ongoing game scores - but make sure I know the ND game score from 7 days ago. It's like they are catering to non-football fans.
September 3rd, 2023 at 9:39 AM ^
[email protected] is the e-mail they announce during the games for complaints / issues.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:26 PM ^
Sound was very bad, and as a poster above said, the lack of replays was bothersome.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:28 PM ^
I liked the new boards... to a degree.
Loved the readability of the scores - MUCH improved over the previous iteration. That said, they could have shrunk the pitch and displayed one more score each panel. They also needed to have better organization of them as it did lean heavy towards completed games which we already knew the scores of. Focus on in-progress or completed games from that day first.
Staying on the boards, the stats side, nice but too much white noise. Go back to the basics and keep them up all the time. Lastly, shrink both sides a bit so the game is the primary focus. As-is the sides are actually distracting.
The soundsystem needed work. Thankfully they did fix some things as the game went on. You could tell it was new tech and am hoping they have the kinks worked out come next week.
Was surprised to see Red Hat Guy with a timer board. Interesting change. He's got to love lugging that around now.
The boards themselves - in person they're definitely big. If they tweak them a bit here and there they'd be pretty cool.
One nitpick - during the band halftime, please please don't clog the screen with anything but the band. Show the pictures after they've finished.
Last bit - was nifty to see a message to someone who apparently has had season tickets for 73 years. That's dedication.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:31 PM ^
New scoreboards are nice, but it appears that they are running the scores by conference, and since Week 1 includes Week 0 in the scores, they had more data than usual. I suspect we'll see a difference next week.
Sound still needs work, as does the connection with the wireless mics. The Charles Woodson defense hype video genuinely felt like it was missing the center channel audio for what Chuck was saying, which was a bummer.
I think the red hat timer situation is new across CFB this year, as I have seen it in other games and did not realize what it was until today.
The serifs on the A and N in Michigan on the scoreboard to not match the Valiant font in the end zone and it bugs me.
New food options include some upgrades (Buddy's replaces Cottage Inn as the new pizza supplier, Big Boy in the north end zone, Olga's, if that's your thing, in Section 7-8, but also included some downgrades, like the BBQ truck that was in the south endzone was not there, and they had the BBQ split I really enjoyed.
It was warm, but better when the clouds came in to play.
They cannot just run the ads for the other sports on the side as just the images they made for social media. I know tomorrow is Barbie Day for women's soccer, I have no idea what time that game starts because it was in a microscopic font on the picture.
September 2nd, 2023 at 7:58 PM ^
The Michigan-ECU heat was nothing compared to 103 degrees during the Texas-Rice game.
September 2nd, 2023 at 8:23 PM ^
It honestly wasn't too bad. It was sunny during the whole 1st half, but lower 80s and had a nice breeze at times.
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:33 PM ^
Oh, I am disappointed that we didn't have the Helmet Shuffle, the Guess the Year, or the acknowledgement of the fact that Slippery Rock play tonight at home against Wayne State.
September 2nd, 2023 at 9:48 PM ^
I felt like the Slippery Rock-Wayne State game was highlighted! They took time out to announce it and give it almost half the scoreboard (I think Carl may have also encouraged people to go to the game?)