STRIB on Student Attendance @ Games (lack thereof)

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stevedave23 said:
How about selling 2,000 standing room only seats for each sold out game?? They can fill in the empties.
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There is plently of standing room along the back wall of the upper concourse. It would seem like releasing additional tickets as SRO wouldn't be an issue for fire-codes as suggested in the article.
 

What "haters"? We're just throwing out ideas on how to get the stadium filled up. If the price of the tickets is so low that people with little interest in attending football games are getting the tickets, that might be a problem. It does make the U look bad if the student section is half empty. If we can get the tickets in the hands of the students who most want to go, that is a very good thing. I'd give out free balloon animals if I thought it would improve student attendance.

Rather than getting mad at people for throwing an idea out there, how about throwing out your own crackpot idea? Some of the ideas might turn out to be not all that crackpotty after all.
 

A simple process, sponsored by the U, by which students turn-in single game tickets for a $7 refund, and they are resold to students as single game tickets for $10-$20 could help also help with this problem.

The spread should cover the cost of redistributing the tickets and maybe even be a revenue stream.
 

Anytime I see or hear the word "hater", I automatically hit the ignore button.
 

it's really not that complicated of a problem....THE ATMOPSHERE IN THE UPPER DECK SUCKS IN THE STUDENT SECTION, you cant hear music, and you cant hear the band...unless you are a diehard football fan there needs to be something extra to keep you there.. currently watching a losing football team with muffled crowd noise isnt cutting it
 


thestl said:
Brilliant idea. Then, ten years from now, we would have no students in the student section because they all would be banned.
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Thanks for adding to the conversation. It was just an idea. Maybe not allowing them to get season tickets the next year is not the answer, but as others have mentioned, maybe reward those who do use their tickets.

If you're going to rip on my idea, at least come up with one of your own.
 

GophersInIowa said:
Thanks for adding to the conversation. It was just an idea. Maybe not allowing them to get season tickets the next year is not the answer, but as others have mentioned, maybe reward those who do use their tickets.

If you're going to rip on my idea, at least come up with one of your own.
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You accusing thestl of being a Republican Congress Member?

:clap::clap::clap:
 

Here's a better idea, get a team that proves to the fans that they're turning around...everyone still has the 1 win season on their minds and it's going to take something to change that...I will always back the gophers, go to all the games, and stay for the whole game, but I have a lot of friends who already said they aren't buying tickets next year because the gophers suck, even though we're a bowl team, but they have the fact that we can't beat a better team than us so we must not be any good.

Also, for all of you saying we need a way to get the fans that really want to be at the game the tickets? If you would join the facebook group, Gopher Ticket Exchange, you will see lots and lots of tickets always for sale, so if you're a true fan, you have no issue on getting your hands on tickets.

It's the mindset of the students as a whole that needs to change, not the prices or anything else. I blame this all on a post-dome hangover and a mediocre team...Also, I like how Weber says he would stay for the whole game or that he actually looks at the crowd to check how many students are left...Maybe that's why he takes so many sacks, he's looking in the upper deck for fans but not downfield to where his receivers are.
 

my solution: Convert 1000 of the student seats to GA seats. Sell 1000 Standing room only (or however many allowed by the fire marshall). Open up student seating to graduating seniors. Allow for groups in the student seat selection lottery (a person is more likely to show up if they know others that are going).

Even then, this still won't solve everything. Bottom line to getting the stands full is to get people that want to be there in the seats. They can blame the weather, where the seats are, the team record, but if they don't actually care about watching our football team, they won't show up regularly. Since we do currently have a waitng list, what we need is the ability and flexibility to fill up seats when the bandwagon fans with season tickets don't show up. We need to have as many avenues open as possible to get fans that actually care in the door.
 



Another idea...all non-students with gopher apparel in the student section, that would help out a lot also as in the past you could bring a bunch of friends that are visiting and your parents with you to a game with a student ticket...now with the U-card rule, which i like to keep opposing fans out, it makes that nearly impossible. All you have to do it tell the scanners, if you see someone that isn't wearing maroon or gold, ask for an id, if they have maroon or gold on, then let them in...
 

RodentRampage said:
Yeah, that's why there are absolutely no businesses in Dinkytown, students don't have any money to spend at all. :rolleyes:

If students are spending the $77 to buy tickets, but aren't interested in attending games, then it seems that price isn't all that a significant factor to them.

I wouldn't be even averse to making it free for students if that would mean a full student section. It would cost about $770,000 in lost revenues, but it might be worth the PR advantage of a full student section.

Just putting out ideas.
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don't you dare teach him economics 101! ;)
 

diefirma said:
Sell 2,000 or so tickets to HS football players at a discount. They have to come with a coach and book in advance. Coach gets in free. Think of this as adverising. For most HS football players this would be a big deal - the only way they are going to see a D1 game. This would build loyality amoung coaches and players.
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i like this idea. i think there are some teams who already do this (in fact i think the u of m used to do it a lot back in the day). definitely would help in building even more loyalty amongst mn hs players & coaches.
 

DLguy said:
No, it was a lot cheaper to tailgate by the dome. What kid in their right mind is going to LEAVE campus to tailgate for a game ON campus. Taking a bus to the State Fair lots is stupid if you are a student, and there is no place to tailgate around the stadium that any kid could afford.
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you don't have to have a parking spot in the lots near the stadium to tailgate in them. me and my buddies party with fellow gophers fans in the tailgate lots near the stadium every saturday and none of us parks our cars there with a season pass. we park and walk over with our beer/food/booze. there is no reason why students can't do this as well. in fact their walk from right on campus is probably shorter than ours is.
 



Ole said:
I think the key to increasing student attendance will get ironed out eventually.
The apathy aspect of it all is going to weed out those who simply have a fleeting interest in going to games. The stadium won't be brand new next year, students now know they can't scalp their tickets as easily as in the dome, they have experienced the cold weather, this will weed out the students who just don't care that much.
The incoming freshmen should get a chunk of tickets next year, this years freshmen will hopefully continue to show up and make a day of it all, apathetic juniors and seniors will graduate, hopefully dedicated new alumni will buy regular season tickets.
Eventually it will all work itself out, unfortunately everyone wants perfection right now, same with the team, same with the stadium.
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great post. i think that you definitely "hit the nail on the head" a few times here. i see it unfolding this way as well.
 

gopheraschells said:
it's really not that complicated of a problem....THE ATMOPSHERE IN THE UPPER DECK SUCKS IN THE STUDENT SECTION, you cant hear music, and you cant hear the band...unless you are a diehard football fan there needs to be something extra to keep you there.. currently watching a losing football team with muffled crowd noise isnt cutting it
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do you know if any of the students have informed joel maturi and his staff of this? or have you via a quick email? perhaps they have turned the PA/scoreboard volume down too low after the lame complaints by some of the blue hairs two miles away following the air force game.

a losing football team? last i checked they were .500 and had beaten a good michigan state team the weekend before. and it was 60 and sunny when illinois came to town last saturday.

sorry, but just wanted to ask a question and point out a false statement in your post.

peace.....
 

Two important factors about the student section is that it's general admission, and it's bench seating. In the dome, everyone pretty much stayed one person to a chair and you had to have a ticket to the particular section (ie. section 119) to get past the security at the top of the stairs. In TCF, students can exit and enter any section in the student section and they can cram together much easier on the benches. Everyone wants to sit in the best seats so students move down as close as possible. A row of 10 seats can easily have 11 people in it, so therefore about 10% of the student section will always be empty, no matter how small it is.

Also, you have to consider that empty seats in the student section end up together in the corners and top of the upper deck. In all the other sections of the stadium, empty seats are scattered throught the entire section, disguising the actual number of empty seats.

I do agree that with the price of season tickets, missing one or two games doesn't sting that much for students. Sometimes students don't go to the games for good reasons, like they have to work, or they went home for the weekend. Some might feel that $11 isn't worth their time to find someone to buy their extra tickets.

And I know this might come to a shock to the diehard gopher fans on this board, but a lot of students are really just "casual" fans. The student section in TCF is similar to the one in Mariucci; it's a place to be seen, and is cool to go to, but a lot of the students there aren't really passionate fans, and don't care if they miss some games.

Either way, unless the football team becomes an unstoppable force, and starts slaughtering good teams, the student section won't be a "packed house" week in and week out.

GO GOPHERS!
 

I am not sure there is a good answer to the student ticket problem. 11:00 AM would have been a huge negative for me when I was in school, so I can understand how that keeps some students out of the Bank. I personally believe the larger issue is making the TCF Bank Stadium part of the culture at the University, someplace students want to be. How is the tailgating for students? If there is tailgating with beer and hot girls, students will show up each and every week. Better performance on the field would also go a long way to a packed student section. This is not a shot at Brewster, it's just that the Gophers have not won anything of significance in the current students lifetime (or many GopherHolers lifetimes). If their was more reason to believe in the Gophers, I think you'd see more students show up. Finally, speaking to just this year, the Gophers have had one chance at a significant upset (Cal, which no longer looks like such a solid performance by the Gophers in hindsight) and could not pull it off. On the other hand, I believe they have now lost two games at home they were favored to win in Wisconsin and Illinois. That's not a great sign for a team opening a new stadium.
 

I'm a student and I have season tickets but I'm also a commuter. I attended the first three home games (AF, Cal, Wisc) but haven't attended one since. Last year I attended the University of Oklahoma which obviously doesn't have any problems filling up their student section. But the student section at Sooner basketball games was always a hot topic of debate. So last season, OU head coach Jeff Capel proposed a new basketball season ticket deal which I think would would very well here. First, the season ticket prices were raised from $100 to $150. Scanners were used at the game and if your ticket was used at every single game then you got a full refund on the season ticket price. The student section was packed for every single game and the atmosphere was very good.

I think this would really work here (although I know it will never happen). Part of the reason I haven't gone to the games (besides staying home to watch my Sooners) is because the student section isn't full, thus leading to a mediocre atmosphere. I just think the incentive of being paid back for attending the games would compel the students who aren't huge football fans to go to the games.
 

POBR25 said:
I'm a student and I have season tickets but I'm also a commuter. I attended the first three home games (AF, Cal, Wisc) but haven't attended one since. Last year I attended the University of Oklahoma which obviously doesn't have any problems filling up their student section. But the student section at Sooner basketball games was always a hot topic of debate. So last season, OU head coach Jeff Capel proposed a new basketball season ticket deal which I think would would very well here. First, the season ticket prices were raised from $100 to $150. Scanners were used at the game and if your ticket was used at every single game then you got a full refund on the season ticket price. The student section was packed for every single game and the atmosphere was very good.

I think this would really work here (although I know it will never happen). Part of the reason I haven't gone to the games (besides staying home to watch my Sooners) is because the student section isn't full, thus leading to a mediocre atmosphere. I just think the incentive of being paid back for attending the games would compel the students who aren't huge football fans to go to the games.
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leaving early is also a problem, so what's to stop them from doing that?
 

bassy123 said:
leaving early is also a problem, so what's to stop them from doing that?
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It's not a bad idea, although I do see some just showing up for a quarter to get their ticket scanned for games for the less important games.

Someone mentioned it before, but I do like the idea of having one of the upper deck student sections for recent graduates. Give priority to those who bought and used their student tickets when in school. Let them buy tickets there for $125-$150 for a year or two. It's a way to reward them coming to games while they were in school.
 

bassy123 said:
leaving early is also a problem, so what's to stop them from doing that?
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That's where the product on the field comes in. You have to fill all the seats first, and then you can address the leaving early problem (and I don't think there's a football school in the country that doesn't have a large contingent on students leave early for games).
 

Honestly, if the university has to create some ridiculously complex system to FORCE the students to attend games, perhaps it's time to just cut back the number of student tickets and sell them to general public?
 


Bronko Nagurski Gopher said:
i like this idea. i think there are some teams who already do this (in fact i think the u of m used to do it a lot back in the day). definitely would help in building even more loyalty amongst mn hs players & coaches.
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I like the idea too, but when I was coaching we had JV games on Saturday. It made 11:00 am games pretty much a no go.
 


Is there an option to oversell the student section? Sell 13,000 tickets at $125-$150 for season tickets and once the cap of 10,000 is reached for the game those students who can't get into the game can get a refund on their tickets for that particular game? Just another idea....

A couple reasons for the poor turnout-

1. Many students just wanting to get tickets for the new stadium since it is new...and nothing else. They went to a couple games and that was it.
2. The consistently inconsistent Gopher football program that gives us all heart aches but glimpses of hope.
3. Early game times. Unfortunately not sure how much pull the U has when it comes to setting game times. I know the Big Ten has the rule about playing NO November games in the evening but hopefully they can they can make most Central Time Zone games at 2:30.

We should expect school officials to come up with a solution for this problem for next years games. Hopefully they don't mess this one up like they did for the whole alcohol debate. Great call on that one....NOT!
 

Won’t some of the problem be resolved without doing anything? Don’t get me wrong, I have been interested to read the various ideas suggested here and hope the system can be improved to benefit the students and the program. But will students who bought tickets this year and then didn’t use them and couldn’t sell them buy them again next year? If there aren’t 10,000 students who want the tickets, then it will be easy to open up those unsold seats to recent grads or the general public. Maybe without renewal privileges so they can be returned to the students if/when demand increases.
 

RodentRampage said:
Empty sections in the student section seems a whole lot worse. It would only involve the less desirable seats in the corners (the students who did show up would have already filled in the more desirable seat). If there is no students in a section, is it really a student section at all?
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I'd rather have 2000 empty seats than 2000 red seats...
 

MN Gopher Fan said:
I have a lot of friends who already said they aren't buying tickets next year because the gophers suck, even though we're a bowl team, but they have the fact that we can't beat a better team than us so we must not be any good.
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Sounds like you need some new friends.
 

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