Hoke promises free donuts to students before noon games
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/brady-hoke-promises-fre…
So maybe showing up early and waiting in line isn't such a bad thing afterall?
It's mainly about the players, though.
Revenue>Players>Fans
But Fans = Revenue, and Revenue = Facilities+Coaches = Players, and Players = Wins = Fans.
So really, Fans = Revenue = Players.
Yes, within reason. It isn't the AD's responsibility to make sure that everyone's preferred dinner time is accomodated, that every individual's preference for length of tailgating time is accomodated, etc. Michigan football plays a game and it is every fan's responsibility to adjust their schedule around that. That concept wasn't a problem for generations of alumni, but apparently it is now.
Half joking but not really - is it possible that the current generation of students, who grew up with TIVO and Hulu and virtually all of their entertainment on demand, just can't understand the concept of an event with a definitive start time?
Maybe not the start time issue, but the YouTube generation (as mentioned in the other Sorority DrunkSlut thread), that they somehow consider Row A premiere seating, which the rest of us (Class of '87 here) passed on their way onto the field to pull goalposts down (in a drunken frenzy, admittedly). The current generation of students want their 15 minutes of fame, borne of watching from really awful vantage points, via 5 seconds of post-game photography or video from the team celebrations/singing of Hail to the Victors...
Here on mgo, we've made Lloyd Brady and Facepalm Guy actual t-shirted memes. Which student WOULDN'T want that kind of fame/infamy/fame?
Damn you techology. You've ruined Michigan football of all things. Damn you to hell. Anybody on this here internet blog know of a website or phone app where I can get a Luddite starter kit?
...MFing head. Pushing to the front is born of wanting to be seen on TV. Nothing more.
Anybody call his donut? Cuz I got first dibs
Dude, let me tell you as someone who sat there. Unless you're in the first 2 rows it's really not that much better than the 20th row.
Also, am I missing something? Why is everyone complaining about lines?? The lines will be the same as they always were, it's just that the people in the back of the line no longer get to be in the front of their section.
If I was a student I'd put forth a little extra effort to get there on time.
Will there be punch too? If so, I'm applying for graduate school today!
[Edit: People apparently don't get the reference to free punch. Can someone help me out with the link to the comment about getting people to join him outside Schembechler Hall by offering punch?]
[Update: Nevermind, found it myself. Classic. http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/lets-protest-front-schembechler-hall-borges-firing ]
I can see it now. North end zone littered with dounuts instead of marshmallows after the first ball call from one of the inept B1G refs.
Bacon. Bacon wrapped glazed donuts.
Bacon is the world's perfect food - ultimate hangover killer.
and having trouble finding part time work,
you might want to walk over to Dimo's deli & donuts. After Hokes announcement something tells me they will be hiring soon
I would be early to every game. Kickoff is always an amazing moment to start a game! To me its like the sound of a war horn commencing battle. LET ME HEAR YOU RAWR!!!!!!!!!!
First, the Athletic Department makes a big deal out of the pathetic student-section attendance/arrivals. Just the sort of p.r. we are always looking for.
Next, they come up with what I can only imagine is one of the worst imaginable "solutions," guaranteeed to make almost everyone upset; General Admission. Likely to only compound an earlier departmental mistake, which was to expand the amount of student seating in the first place. I'll bet a dozen glazed donuts that "General Admission" doesn't solve anything.
And now, they self-troll the world wide web with what must make the content-writers at Eleven Warriors very angry. Stealing their best lines. It would have seemed too obvious to Ramzy & Co., if they had made this up on their own; Brady Hoke promising glazed donuts to students at noon games, to get them there on time.
Isn't this just a textbook example of how not to manage the Michigan football brand? The overweight head football coach jokingly promising glazed donuts to disaffected students who just might need to be bribed, in order to wake up before noon on a Saturday morning to drag themslves up to Main Street to watch the football team?
I think Section 1 might be overreacting a bit (not the 1st time)
your reaction to this might be worse than the actual news itself.
Why does everyone have their panties in a collective bunch about this being fodder for OSU and MSU fans making fat jokes? RCMB and 11W were going to try and fail at being funny in that regard anyways.
I think this is a pretty cool gesture by Hoke to reach out to the fans - it's kinda like Paterno and Mike Krz-howeveryouspellit getting pizzas for students camped out for tickets at Penn State and Duke except that Hoke is neither an pedo-enabler or hypocritical corporate shill that looks like a goblin.
It's an awesome gesture only lost on Section 1 because Coach Hoke isn't spelled "R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E-Z".
So far the only people it's pissed off is students, and mainly senior students. Polls show the public loves it. And a kind public gesture to offer kids a treat is seen as just that by the 99% of the population who wouldn't even know what an "Eleven Warriors" is, and even if they did, couldn't care less.
I'm guessing it's only a "PR nightmare" to those looking for any opportunity to find something wrong with the athletic department....
So we now have Departmental interns announcing ticketing and admissions intiatives, via their Twitter accoutns?
I don't even believe that this cockamamie scheme is real.
Intern Laura appears to have overheard Hoke making a comment about donuts. Zach Helfand beat me to it, asking her if she was serious about the Tweet. Is this a real offer? Srsly?
And Intern Laura's response was the confidence-inspiring, "pretty sure." Followed up with some of the hardest documentary evidence of seriousness that anyone could gather today; Hoke used to buy donuts "while riding a bike to football games back in the day..."
Huh?!? Here are the Twitters:
Laura Raines @itsraininglaura
Word from Coach Hoke: Free glazed donuts for all students before noon home games. #goblue
Zach Helfand 
Laura Raines @zhelfand pretty sure. he used to stop at a donut shop for a glazed donut (or two) while riding a bike to football games back in the day.
So there. Proof positive.
I don't think that anybody ran this by, uh, Mr. Brandon. Or anyone else in the Department who can, like, write checks.
The part that I find so ironic is that the The Donut Plan isn't likely to do much of anything except make the bottleneck at the North entry gates to the Stadium worse than ever. One thing that I have been remarking on for a couple of years is that the students all jam up at that entry gate, and with modern security concerns, that entry-gate slowness is probably the biggest reason of all, that students are not inside the Stadium when kickoff time arrives. I have actually tended to give the students a break on that fact; it is not entirely their fault that they keep missing kickoffs, when they have to wait 20 minutes at the entry gate. That problem might get even worse, with a massive dounut stand added to the mess.
This is such a laughably terrible idea, from start to finish. I am starting the clock now on how long it will be before the responsible adults at 1000 South State Street start to walk back this preposterous idea.
If that's all there is backing this up as an actual thing.
April 24th, 2013 at 10:02 PM ^
The Michigan Daily updates the story:
UPDATE: Associate Athletic Director Dave Ablauf said Wednesday that “nothing has been determined in terms of quantity, etc.” but he added that Hoke “has always been a proponent of students arriving early, and he wants to do something to incentivize the group.”
Translation: We had no idea this blurted out thing was going to become a real thing. Now, so that we don't leave Coach Hoke hanging out there like a complete fool, we think we may be able to get our stadium coffee vendor, Tim Horton's, to help us out with 1000 free donuts for the first 1000 students... We'll get back to you as soon as we have been able to dream up some way out of this and can give you some details which, yeah, we know will only give this goofy story another couple of news cycles' worth of infamy...
It doesn't much matter. The problem isn't the first 1000 or first 10,000 students through the turnstiles. The problem is the last 5,000 or 10,000. They really don't need to bribe most students to go to a football game. The problem is getting them, all of them, there on time. And getting the last ones to go at all.
A treat for the first ones through the gate isn't going to be any more productive than general admission seating.
is who cares what the public thinks about GA when it isn't directly affecting them?
I could see the attendance problem being a "big deal" if one of the following conditions were true:
1) We are losing our homefield advantage.
2) It is negatively affecting the in-game experience of recruits who come to see a game at the Big House, or the negative image is making recruits wary of coming.
3) We lose the 100k attendance streak.
Now, until the Mathlete shows me that we are doing wayyy worse on opening drives compared to schools that don't have early-game attendance issues (standardized for opponents and team efficiency stats), I'm gonna assume 1 isn't happening because we are undefeated at home over the last two seasons.
Again, unless someone shows recruiting is being affected, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's not given our recent drastic recruiting improvements.
And the attendance streak isn't affected by on-time arrivals, it's determined by how many people show up whenever they want to.
----------
In conclusion, here is my point: everybody is lambasting these "entitled" current students for whining about GA, when in reality the only issue is that alums and fans--many of whom cannot relate one iota to current students--are whining over the fact that when they watch michigan football on their tv's at home, the stadium isn't full because students are doing whatever the hell they want to do.
The affected patrons will never come back.
The disaffected students will lose more interest in Michigan football.
The change will effect the students, and they might lose interests in Michigan football.
This seems like a less effective solution than a monitored points system.
This policy effecting the student body will blow over in time, and a new problem of the real power players decreasing the SS by an entire section to bolster ticket profits.
The affect effects the effective affect.
That first one is wrong, as is the fourth. I'm not clear on the sixth...
"Likely to only compound an earlier departmental mistake, which was to expand the amount of student seating in the first place"
I keep hearing this, and it's dumb. All students who want one and can pay up are guaranteed a student season ticket - there is not a lottery and nobody gets turned down. The size of the student section is entirely a function of how many students purchase season tickets.
The point is that all students are accommodated as a policy. It's not as if 1000 students were being turned away every year and they finally gave in and added to the student section. They didn't decide anything, other than where to stick the students they had already guaranteed seats.
Isn't it supposed to happen this off-season?
Fine, don't get any donuts then. Damn.
April 25th, 2013 at 12:37 PM ^
I agree with the comment that we are blessed to watch Michigan football and there is no bad seat in the Big House, but it's principle. Upperclassmen before us had to wait their time to get closer to the field and we have waited ours. I, personally, am always in the stadium nearly an hour to 45 minutes prior to game time. I like watching warm-ups and love watching the band come out of the tunnel. I don't get the students that don't show up on time because there is no excuse for it.
For a problem with GA seating, all you have to do is look at the MSU student section. Granted they aren't nearly as good of fans as us since they are a 'basketball' school, but the upper bowl is never full. If students know they aren't going to be close to the field, they simply decide to keep drinking and not show up. I fear that may happen here at Michigan, too. We shall see, but I have a feeling the GA idea may get revoked or at least I'm going to pray for it.
Angry.
Is this some kind of cheat for The Simpsons: Tapped Out?
In all reality, for all the hand-wringing the students are doing about this, it will probably end up just fine. After a few games, a new routine will solidify, everyone will pretty much figure out how to get to where they want to be, and that'll be that.
If I were them, I'd be bitching far more about the ticket price increase than anything else. If that's the method Athletics picked to weed out the fairweathers, it's a pretty shitty way to do it. They don't need the cash that makes up the difference. Most students probably could.
If I were a student I wouldn't bitch about anything as it relates to Michigan home games.
Smile. Laugh. Have a little fun. Blow off some steam. Go to games and support your team. Best years of your life.
but, what the hell? I loved football when I was at Michigan and did not need a donut to go to a game. Just don't get season tickets if you don't like it. Watch it on T.V. Quit complaining about the seating, the time, blah, blah blah. Why does anyone need to offer Donuts to go to a game? What is wrong with this world? I also, for the record, was in a sorority and did not show up to every game loaded or late. (sorry for the rant, I think the weather is getting to me. Anyone see the snow today? Srsly, what. the. hell.)
Yeah, the whole non-attendance thing seems crazy to me. I wasn't even that big of a football fan in college (much bigger one now), and I was there for every game, sober, and ready to cheer. It was the highlight of the week in the fall.