Kill and Teague handing out free student tickets across campus on Friday

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Sweet pic with that story:

9Gophers0831.jpg
 

Seems like it goes beyond handing out free tickets around campus

http://www.twincities.com/gophers/ci_21472760/gophers-football-hopes-free-tickets-freshmen-entice-5

"The University of Minnesota's 5,500 incoming freshmen attended a mandatory rally with Gophers football coach Jerry Kill on Friday, Aug. 31. They were all given free tickets to the home opener against New Hampshire on Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium."

Mandatory rally? Can they do that? Class isn't mandatory but a football rally is?
 

justthefacts said:
Seems like it goes beyond handing out free tickets around campus

http://www.twincities.com/gophers/ci_21472760/gophers-football-hopes-free-tickets-freshmen-entice-5

"The University of Minnesota's 5,500 incoming freshmen attended a mandatory rally with Gophers football coach Jerry Kill on Friday, Aug. 31. They were all given free tickets to the home opener against New Hampshire on Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium."

Mandatory rally? Can they do that? Class isn't mandatory but a football rally is?
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Yep. Yep. Yep.
 

Guessing since it was part of Welcome Week, they made it mandatory. They have the kids on a schedule for that whole week. It makes sense though why there are stories of kids giving tickets away, when you give 5,500 students tickets to a football game there's bound to be a more-than-negligible percentage that don't give a hoot about sports. If we get half of those 5,500 to show up on Saturday I'll have considered it a success.
 


justthefacts said:
Mandatory rally? Can they do that? Class isn't mandatory but a football rally is?
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It's part of Welcome Week and as others have noted, lots of stuff during WW is mandatory (same as pretty much every other school I've heard of). If you don't show up it's not like anyone really notices or you're punished. And last time I checked, a lot of classes had mandatory attendance requirements. :)
 



Anything that gets the student section close to full. I was in tears watching the Virginia Tech student section and realizing how pathetic ours is.
 



afurry91 said:
Anything that gets the student section close to full. I was in tears watching the Virginia Tech student section and realizing how pathetic ours is.
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3,100 tickets sold is VERY distressing. This goes WAY beyond a team that's merely not good. There's gotta be an attitude on campus that games simply AREN'T THAT FUN. I mean Michigan sells 27K, and WI 13K? I would understand if we were half WI (say, a still lousy 6,500). That explains an historically poor team. but less than 25%? The kids just don't wanna go. Very depressing.
 

afurry91 said:
Anything that gets the student section close to full. I was in tears watching the Virginia Tech student section and realizing how pathetic ours is.
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It's easy to be enthusiastic when you've gone to 19 straight bowl games (including 8 BCS or BCS-equivalent bowls).
 

dpodoll68 said:
It's easy to be enthusiastic when you've gone to 19 straight bowl games (including 8 BCS or BCS-equivalent bowls).
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And have had nothing but 10+ win seasons for what, like 8 or 9 years running now?
 

tato2001 said:
3,100 tickets sold is VERY distressing. This goes WAY beyond a team that's merely not good. There's gotta be an attitude on campus that games simply AREN'T THAT FUN. I mean Michigan sells 27K, and WI 13K? I would understand if we were half WI (say, a still lousy 6,500). That explains an historically poor team. but less than 25%? The kids just don't wanna go. Very depressing.
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That the students don't see the Gophers games as a fun event worth their time is a concern, but let's put this into perspective. The article says:

The Gophers have sold 3,100 student season tickets for football as of Wednesday morning. They sold 500 more tickets at this point last year and a total of 6,000 student season tickets in 2011.
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Student ticket sales are about 86% of what they were at this point last season. If they continue at this pace, it would be about 5,200. This isn't good, but the student ticket sales will be higher than they stand today. And perhaps Teague and Kill can sell some more tickets.
 



I guess my point is I see this as VERY strong evidence that it's game day experience, game day experience, game day experience.

Sure the home schedule isn't that enticing. But the Gophers beat Iowa at home and closed with a solid victory over Illinois last year. I would have expected student interest to be (slightly) stronger this year, not significantly weaker.
 

I don't think students look at two unexpected wins as the reason they should buy tickets this year. Instead, it's probably more about "will I walk into the stadium every game and feel like we have a chance to win, or will I walk in expecting a loss?" Frankly, the majority expect a loss when they walk into the stadium on Saturdays. It's culture, but it's also history.

We're the diehard-iest fans of the team and even we have trouble expecting a competitive team week after week. But I think we also have trouble seeing what the more "average" fan thinks sometimes.

Joe Student who is in it for a good time says to himself "why go to the game if they're just going to lose?" Losing isn't fun. Expectations of a loss are not fun. So, they avoid it. There has to be a change - starting on the field, giving tangible results - to change that attitude. In my opinion, of course.
 

tato2001 said:
I guess my point is I see this as VERY strong evidence that it's game day experience, game day experience, game day experience.

Sure the home schedule isn't that enticing. But the Gophers beat Iowa at home and closed with a solid victory over Illinois last year. I would have expected student interest to be (slightly) stronger this year, not significantly weaker.
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That's part of it, sure. But if it were the only thing, then winning wouldn't help it. I am hoping the Gophers win some games so we can test whether winning would sell more tickets, but until the Gophers win some games, we won't really be able to test it.

Perception is part of it. If students look around and those around them don't seem interested, they will be less inclined to attend. If they see that others are interested, they will be more likely to be interested themselves. The tricky part is how to change that perception.
 

tato2001 said:
Sure the home schedule isn't that enticing. But the Gophers beat Iowa at home and closed with a solid victory over Illinois last year. I would have expected student interest to be (slightly) stronger this year, not significantly weaker.
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I think the people they would be trying to entice had "moved on" by that point in terms of interest. Plus, those wins were part of a 3-9 season. You can try to use them to sell excitement but that will only get you so far with people if all they want to see is 3-9.
 

tato2001 said:
I guess my point is I see this as VERY strong evidence that it's game day experience, game day experience, game day experience.

Sure the home schedule isn't that enticing. But the Gophers beat Iowa at home and closed with a solid victory over Illinois last year. I would have expected student interest to be (slightly) stronger this year, not significantly weaker.
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We beat Iowa and Illinois the year before that too.
 

Gopherprof said:
We beat Iowa and Illinois the year before that too.
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This brings up an important related point. In 2010 at least the wins were back to back. The Iowa and Illinois wins last season were bookends around a big loss to Wisconsin at home too. Sure, there was the good effort against MSU too, but it was still a loss and it was on the road. Excitement from the Iowa win was very likely sucked away by the Wisky loss and a Thansgiving weekend game against an imploding Illinois team won't bring that back.
 

Yeah, I get all that. Perhaps it's on-campus marketing. I mean sure they were 3-9, but I'm definitely more interested in the team this year than last year (maybe 'interested' isn't the best word, because first year of Kill definitely interested me, but I'm looking to see more things happen even though I don't expect them to be particularly good). Perhaps it goes to the over-estimating the general interest as someone pointed out.

In contrast, I dumped my Twins season tickets this year not so much because they stunk last year, but because it was SO obvious they would be as bad and less interesting this year. In fact, I considered dumping my Twins tickets after they made the playoffs in 2010 because it was clear the probability of outcomes was skewed to the downside. I would have hoped that marketing the Gophers to increased expectations would have had SOME positive impact this year over last. Apparently not.
 

tato2001 said:
Yeah, I get all that. Perhaps it's on-campus marketing. I mean sure they were 3-9, but I'm definitely more interested in the team this year than last year (maybe 'interested' isn't the best word, because first year of Kill definitely interested me, but I'm looking to see more things happen even though I don't expect them to be particularly good). Perhaps it goes to the over-estimating the general interest as someone pointed out.

In contrast, I dumped my Twins season tickets this year not so much because they stunk last year, but because it was SO obvious they would be as bad and less interesting this year. In fact, I considered dumping my Twins tickets after they made the playoffs in 2010 because it was clear the probability of outcomes was skewed to the downside. I would have hoped that marketing the Gophers to increased expectations would have had SOME positive impact this year over last. Apparently not.
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I think the issue is that there isn't a clear marketing direction and hasn't really been for some time. Well, that's not true. They've tried to sell the Gophers as NFL-lite for a while but that's a losing proposition in a pro market.
 

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