7 Solutions to the Student Attendance dilemma.
- Thread starter Thirty-Two Dive
- Start date
just so that we are clear, what "bold" statement have i presented as indisputable fact? and who has gone postal other than you making a big deal over nothing? of course the OP's thread is about keeping students attendance throughout the game ....it is 17ing titled "7 solutions to the student attendance dilemma" and he gave multiple points as to how it was relative to msu in fixing our problem. keep in mind the context is less than a week after a tight game where 20% of the student population remained through mid 3rd quarter. the OP said there was a problem with student attendance and everyone knew exactly what he was talking about except apparently you...and without context, that might be understandable. i, in turn, used the same term he did and everyone else knew exactly what was meant by it, with one exception. sounds like your beef is with the OP not someone commenting on a mutual understanding of what was meant by his term "attendance". if you want to criticize anything, criticize the fact that students, in general, dont use bulldog club points, but to say something about it would be nit-picking as he obviously realizes that its not just the students. sometimes, its better not to say anything at all than to get into a stupid argument about the obvious intentions of the OP. if it was not obvious, everyone would be confused, but it appears that most people understood the OP to means by attendance. context brah. i like you as a poster, but people that start **** over nothing and want to get into an argument over semantics need to do something better with their time. it seems the older posters want to start **** over nothing all the time...and thats fine, but i think your issue is with the OP...and its something that seems very trivial to start an argument over.
They cracked down on booze while I was there. They might turn the other cheek to you older folks just like they do with y'all holding blatant beer cans outside, but they were soup nazis about booze there at the end of my stay.
Now... I mean I know why... There were an alarming number of fights that season in the stands. I have no clue if it's the same now. But the fact remains you're asking kids to buy whiskey and then buy $5 cokes for every drink they want to make. Postgrad me thinks $5 a whiskey drink is a good deal, college me and Rick's $1 night me thinks $5 is a big deal.
Mississippi will never allow beer sales to happen. The best idea I've heard so far is to not allow students in until right before the game.
ETA: if the Sun Belt has documented success with their beer sales, USM is going to want in. And I think they have a lot better chance of convincing the state to allow it than we do, as weird as that sounds. Here's to the Sun Belt.
My take....
I don't see #1 working. Instead of going in the stadium early they will just stand in line early which, given the subject excuse, will make them even more likely to leave early. I must say however that I find the 'early arrival' excuse a bit mystifying. It makes no sense to me to go to all the trouble of getting to a football game two hours early and just to leave at halftime! To an older fan like me the thought of leaving a football game that early, and especially one that is not put away yet, just does not compute. There is only one way that makes sense and I think it's the key to this issue. That is that the football contest itself is no where close to the primary reason students come to the games. The most obvious reason is the party/social aspect. I think we have to face it that this generation's paradigm is just different in this way. Devising schemes to keep students in the stadium I think are at best going to just bandaid things and be of limited effectiveness. I think this is especially true of cupcake games. Might as well write those off. My hope is that the students will stay for all of the SEC games. I also think the administration needs to be careful with any punitive means to keep students in their seats. That could really backfire if too heavy handed.
I don't see #1 working. Instead of going in the stadium early they will just stand in line early which, given the subject excuse, will make them even more likely to leave early. I must say however that I find the 'early arrival' excuse a bit mystifying. It makes no sense to me to go to all the trouble of getting to a football game two hours early and just to leave at halftime! To an older fan like me the thought of leaving a football game that early, and especially one that is not put away yet, just does not compute. There is only one way that makes sense and I think it's the key to this issue. That is that the football contest itself is no where close to the primary reason students come to the games. The most obvious reason is the party/social aspect. I think we have to face it that this generation's paradigm is just different in this way. Devising schemes to keep students in the stadium I think are at best going to just bandaid things and be of limited effectiveness. I think this is especially true of cupcake games. Might as well write those off. My hope is that the students will stay for all of the SEC games. I also think the administration needs to be careful with any punitive means to keep students in their seats. That could really backfire if too heavy handed.
I don't really miss lack of Internet to my phone at the game either. But at the USM game, the HS kid sitting next to me was looking at Instagram for what seemed like the entire game. Kids and some adults now a days are addicted to their phone.
If a person's sole goal is to get and stay drunk all day, why not just go do that? Why does getting wasted have to have an event as the backdrop? I'm no tee-totaler, but if my entire life revolved around trying to figure out how to get wasted at every event I attended and not attending if I couldn't, I'd consider it a sad life. (Not directed at Shamoan, just a general statement.)
That being said, man the student section exit ramps with scanners, scan IDs on the way out and have some type of carrot/stick system that rewarded/punished students for using/wasting their access to football tickets. Keep database of those who never even came to the game but had tickets and use that data too. "Back in my day"...we went to the game and stayed. Of course we had a pretty sweet student section location then.
Am I crazy in asking why we need a certain number of students at football games? Call me old school, but this seems like a pretty simple supply/demand equation to me, and if students aren't using the tickets and seats that have been allotted to them, then keep cutting their allotment back until we get back to the break even point. I think there is plenty of demand for tickets such that we shouldn't be having to figure out how to convince students to come to games. If they've got better things to do, then more power to them
The problem that we, and every other school, are facing with student attendance at football games is that if today's students don't go to the games, tomorrow's alumni won't go to the games or donate to the athletic booster club. You lose a generation of fans.
I'm not so sure. Some of the worst offenders I knew of leaving at the half or giving away their "UAB tickets" are now season ticket holders.
It's 100% experience related. Season ticket holders can walk into the stadium 5 minutes before kickoff. I'm sure some of you wouldn't bother showing up if you had to get there 2 hours early.
Where do you think these students are going at the half? I imagine 20 years after graduation people's priorities will be entirely different, but I don't think they'll not come to MSU games. A solid portion don't care about football all together. It's a social event.
I just had an image in my head of a 40 year old getting up from the game at halftime to go get drunk in the junction to pregame for the Yiny Yang Twins at the Phi Delt house.
It's 100% experience related. Season ticket holders can walk into the stadium 5 minutes before kickoff. I'm sure some of you wouldn't bother showing up if you had to get there 2 hours early.
Where do you think these students are going at the half? I imagine 20 years after graduation people's priorities will be entirely different, but I don't think they'll not come to MSU games. A solid portion don't care about football all together. It's a social event.
I just had an image in my head of a 40 year old getting up from the game at halftime to go get drunk in the junction to pregame for the Yiny Yang Twins at the Phi Delt house.