Two things I wish our AD or SA would do about the student section

[Lloyd Christmas]

1. Start some kind of grass roots campaign to get the students to slow the **** down on the MaroonWhiteFightFightFight Cheer.
(I believe this is much more viable than #2)

2. Make students leaving games early or not showing up at all accountable. I.E. If you leave games early we have a system that would give you penalties for leaving early and credits for staying for the whole game. Possible penalties could be getting waitlisted for tickets the next year. Then we could adjust the size of the student section till we come up with a good fit. Not quite sure how this could be implemented, though.

[bluelightstar]

Students not showing up/leaving early has been a problem at every SEC school (at least this past year or two), and nobody has figured out a way to fix it. Not sure that threats are going to be what gets it done.

[Lloyd Christmas]

Students not showing up/leaving early has been a problem at every SEC school (at least this past year or two), and nobody has figured out a way to fix it. Not sure that threats are going to be what gets it done.

The best way to get it done IMO is to install advanced cellular/wifi equipment. It will probably cost millions but it will keep people in the stands.

[esplanade91]

It wasn't a problem at MSU until they eliminated fraternities being able to send pledges to save spots. Not completely attributing it to that, I ultimately think our fans have become spoiled, but I was guilty of leaving my last year. You could either 1) skip tailgating (ie not get drunk/lose your drunk by kickoff) and arrive 3 hours before and sit there and be brainwashed by commercials 2) get there at a reasonable time before and sit in the upper deck OR have someone throw you down a wristband so you can have an overcrowded space in the bottom level cramped between some fatass and some rando sorostitute taking selfies the whole time.

In an attempt to make game day better they deflated the balloon. They could REALLY improve things with minimal effort by finding a different system than wristbands because that was a joke.

People need to remember that football is 75% entertainment. Most people could honestly probably not give a shit about MSU's football team. They come to tailgate and socialize. 2009 and 2010 had a good blend of both, then they started implementing Stalin rules which tilted it away from fun. Time to move back.

[BrunswickDawg]

I've never understood why they make the student section "general admission" anyway. All the tickets should be assigned a seat. With as many campus organizations as there are they could distribute the seating in blocks and solve the problem for 80% of the students. Everyone else could get their seats assigned based on attendance at all sporting events - and give you the ability to buy small "friend" blocks together as long as you have ID #'s. Or something, it can't be that hard with all the on-line seat selection tools today.

[esplanade91]

I've never understood why they make the student section "general admission" anyway. All the tickets should be assigned a seat. With as many campus organizations as there are they could distribute the seating in blocks and solve the problem for 80% of the students. Everyone else could get their seats assigned based on attendance at all sporting events - and give you the ability to buy small "friend" blocks together as long as you have ID #'s. Or something, it can't be that hard with all the on-line seat selection tools today.
That wouldn't be fair. Look at the whole Rick's Rowdies and how that blew up, and that's with people not even caring about wanting those seats. People bitched out of principle. Imagine football, something people really care about and a sport we're actually good in.

Some things are better left untouched. Like fraternities "hazing" their pledges by making them DD, another thing the university cracked down on.

In theory I agree with all the changes they've made. They just suck in real life. I'm ok with them TRYING to better things, but when they fail don't try to act like they haven't. That's probably the most frustrating thing about all this. Marketing included.

[TheRef]

That wouldn't be fair. Look at the whole Rick's Rowdies and how that blew up, and that's with people not even caring about wanting those seats. People bitched out of principle. Imagine football, something people really care about and a sport we're actually good in.

Some things are better left untouched. Like fraternities "hazing" their pledges by making them DD, another thing the university cracked down on.

In theory I agree with all the changes they've made. They just suck in real life. I'm ok with them TRYING to better things, but when they fail don't try to act like they haven't. That's probably the most frustrating thing about all this. Marketing included.

That whole Rick's Rowdies situation just wasn't handled very well. I was an officer on Rick's Rowdies during the final year. We had already made our plans for the next season and all of a sudden we get a call from Rick saying "Hey....you need to just delay the meeting for now. We'll talk later." Next thing you know, the press release comes out that the Rick's Rowdies has been disbanded and that everything that we had was for naught. We had hundreds of t-shirts that were donated to charity after everything was disbanded. The whole thing was handled poorly because we found out as officers that we were disbanded by way of a press release. No discussion with us. No email giving us a heads up about this. All we got was a "You need to delay your meeting." So we had to deal the whole year with people asking us "Why didn't y'all contact us about Rick's Rowdies after we gave you our email?" That left a bad taste in my mouth and the student section was left off even worse because of the apathy of the fans. Also, just a word from what I've heard from marketing people, if you want to win something that is determined by the marketing department you shouldn't sit in the front two rows because they never pick someone in the front two rows to win. So the students who were there hours before tip-off basically were ignored for prizes. Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?

[esplanade91]

That whole Rick's Rowdies situation just wasn't handled very well. I was an officer on Rick's Rowdies during the final year. We had already made our plans for the next season and all of a sudden we get a call from Rick saying "Hey....you need to just delay the meeting for now. We'll talk later." Next thing you know, the press release comes out that the Rick's Rowdies has been disbanded and that everything that we had was for naught. We had hundreds of t-shirts that were donated to charity after everything was disbanded. The whole thing was handled poorly because we found out as officers that we were disbanded by way of a press release. No discussion with us. No email giving us a heads up about this. All we got was a "You need to delay your meeting." So we had to deal the whole year with people asking us "Why didn't y'all contact us about Rick's Rowdies after we gave you our email?" That left a bad taste in my mouth and the student section was left off even worse because of the apathy of the fans. Also, just a word from what I've heard from marketing people, if you want to win something that is determined by the marketing department you shouldn't sit in the front two rows because they never pick someone in the front two rows to win. So the students who were there hours before tip-off basically were ignored for prizes. Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?

Your username makes a lot more sense now.

I'm not going to get into Rick's Rowdies, but I was referring to y'all getting a special section in the student section. That was a hot topic, and it didn't sit well with people. Imagine football.

ETA: Makes total sense to me that the people in the first couple of rows are going to receive less prizes. That's not an MSU thing. That's pretty universal.

[BrunswickDawg]

That wouldn't be fair. Look at the whole Rick's Rowdies and how that blew up, and that's with people not even caring about wanting those seats. People bitched out of principle. Imagine football, something people really care about and a sport we're actually good in.

Some things are better left untouched. Like fraternities "hazing" their pledges by making them DD, another thing the university cracked down on.

In theory I agree with all the changes they've made. They just suck in real life. I'm ok with them TRYING to better things, but when they fail don't try to act like they haven't. That's probably the most frustrating thing about all this. Marketing included.

I think one difference would be that with all the students in the north end zone, all the students are pretty much getting the same view and experience an actually decent seats - unlike the Rowdies that got a special section (or at least that is how it was perceived - it was long after my time at State). Having fought the battle to save seats for my fraternity as a pledge, it just seems like there has to be a better solution that allows the organizations to sit together and fill the section without having to get there so damn early.

[TheRef]

Your username makes a lot more sense now.

I'm not going to get into Rick's Rowdies, but I was referring to y'all getting a special section in the student section. That was a hot topic, and it didn't sit well with people. Imagine football.

Agreed. I do know that we were the brunt of all the jokes and insults by other students. And I know that most students were not happy about us having that standing room only section at the bottom next to the court. But take into account that we did have dues (albeit very cheap) to pay for pizza for meetings and to help pay for tshirts. The reason we were given for us being disbanded after we contacted the University was that we weren't inclusive enough of other students. We agreed to disagree on that because all that was required was a small due to pay for food that we had for every monthly meeting and tshirts. Before the season, we also had a grill-out with Rick, his family, the team, cheerleaders, and pom squad at his house just off of Oktoc Road. So I feel that given the price that was required, it wasn't really that bad of a deal. Rick's Rowdies actually had more perks back in the day. When it was originally founded, the student section was along the sideline behind the radio and tv people. Rick's Rowdies members were given first priority for tickets (they were physical tickets then) and also had the first two/three rows reserved. As time has gone on, we haven't really had any perks. All we had was t-shirt, standing-room only section (which even some members didn't like), and a pre-season meal with the whole group.

Also, before the season that year there was a panel of student organization leaders that met in the Mize Pavilion to try and figure out the best course of action. The block tickets idea was thrown out there and pretty much quickly rejected by some groups. The Athletic Department pretty much asked everyone what their ideas were for drumming up support and trying to get excitement back to the basketball games. Rick was in there so the obvious answer of "Win" wasn't an option for fear of basically getting the stink-eye from Rick. So some ideas were thrown out and none of them were really good. I'm just telling you what I saw and heard during my time.

[esplanade91]

Hey, I'm all for more student support. But you have to admit that it's an insult to injury when we're down 30, it's 3/4 empty, and the remaining fans look miserable to have 4 or 5 very visible guys doing cheers and whatnot. Not that I'm saying cheering is a bad thing. It just gave off a bad image.

The Dudes are a good model to follow, and it wasn't a coincidence that came about WHEN WE STARTED WINNING. DNF was just as bad or worse than the Hump not long ago.

Rick's Rowdies ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth because Rick Stansbury was a hack and Ray was a bad hire (sticking to that). It's something to revisit the offseason after the first good season we have.

Football has plenty of fans. We just need to quit alienating them and giving them a reason to leave. I don't want to hear about TV, because no one would rather sit at home and watch a game if they could go to DWS and have an enjoyable experience.

It's easy.

#1 back off pledges saving seats.
#2 find a new system to replace wristbands because people just give them away and it does nothing to keep people out of the bottom rows when it's full.
#3 find something fun and nonintrusive to put on the jumbotron the hour before kickoff.
#4 fix cellphone towers
#5 give shit away in the 2nd half (if they can give away iPads at every home basketball game in 2011 they can do this for football)
#6 don't schedule cupcakes. If you're ok with scheduling cupcakes, don't complain about students leaving.
#7 collaborate with dean of students and make it to where bands playing at fraternities can't begin playing until 30 minutes from the end of the game, whenever that might be. Fraternities have gotten ridiculous as far as who've they managed to get to come to campus and it's eliminated a significant portion of girls who leave early to be ready to see Mike Jones or whoever and guys who want to go take a shower, get loaded, and put on 3 lbs of Axe body spray before they show up.

[Johnson85]

2. Make students leaving games early or not showing up at all accountable. I.E. If you leave games early we have a system that would give you penalties for leaving early and credits for staying for the whole game. Possible penalties could be getting waitlisted for tickets the next year. Then we could adjust the size of the student section till we come up with a good fit. Not quite sure how this could be implemented, though.

The only way is to offer students something (say, assigned seating in the lower level; let people put their ID#'s together to buy tickets in small groups) and then put in a system where they have to swipe their ID card when they come in and sometime after the end of the 3rd quarter. It'd be expensive to implement, plus you'd have to have somebody watching the scanners to make sure one person didn't scan off multiple ID's. Students that leave early get docked points in priority next year (or next game if you assign seats weekly, which would probably be the way to do it so that people didn't get screwed for the whole year on seat assignments, although that adds to the complexity. That's potentially a lot of money to spend just to keep students there after halftime. You could probably come up with a system where people 'check-in' with their phone, but I'm guessing that'd be pretty easy to get around and there are probably some students without phones (assuming you could even get the phones to work in the stadium consistently). The only other alternative I can think of is to just reduce the ticket allotment when teh student section isn't full after halftime, but that's going to punish the students that stay as much as the students that don't.

[esplanade91]

People are putting too much thought into this. Students aren't going to leave when our football team is beating Auburn by 10 at the beginning of the 4th. They will leave in the form of a mass exodus when we're up 14 vs MTSU. There's just no way around it.

Catch 22. We're not good enough to play TTU or Washington or BC as OOC games (apparently) so we schedule shit teams to beat and no one wants to watch us beat shit teams. People REALLY don't want to see us lose OOC games though.

[bluelightstar]

People are putting too much thought into this. Students aren't going to leave when our football team is beating Auburn by 10 at the beginning of the 4th. They will leave in the form of a mass exodus when we're up 14 vs MTSU. There's just no way around it.

Catch 22. We're not good enough to play TTU or Washington or BC as OOC games (apparently) so we schedule shit teams to beat and no one wants to watch us beat shit teams. People REALLY don't want to see us lose OOC games though.

Yes, please let's not manage to rehash the Bowling Green game debate. The new generation of fan (that is the students now) don't want to watch State vs. Crap Team for the whole time. People will stay to watch us play good teams in the SEC or otherwise.

[Gen. Grant]

Guys, Im not sure that y'all have noticed but pledges still save seats. Also, the ones who end up leaving early are the drunk frats who get angry because things are not going well and leave to go party. Most of the non-greek fans are the ones that end up staying. A better way would be to give the greeks designated spots to sit through a lottery. If their section is missing after halftime, they lose their section.

[ScoobaDawg]

Agreed. I do know that we were the brunt of all the jokes and insults by other students. And I know that most students were not happy about us having that standing room only section at the bottom next to the court. But take into account that we did have dues (albeit very cheap) to pay for pizza for meetings and to help pay for tshirts. The reason we were given for us being disbanded after we contacted the University was that we weren't inclusive enough of other students. We agreed to disagree on that because all that was required was a small due to pay for food that we had for every monthly meeting and tshirts. Before the season, we also had a grill-out with Rick, his family, the team, cheerleaders, and pom squad at his house just off of Oktoc Road. So I feel that given the price that was required, it wasn't really that bad of a deal. Rick's Rowdies actually had more perks back in the day. When it was originally founded, the student section was along the sideline behind the radio and tv people. Rick's Rowdies members were given first priority for tickets (they were physical tickets then) and also had the first two/three rows reserved. As time has gone on, we haven't really had any perks. All we had was t-shirt, standing-room only section (which even some members didn't like), and a pre-season meal with the whole group.

Also, before the season that year there was a panel of student organization leaders that met in the Mize Pavilion to try and figure out the best course of action. The block tickets idea was thrown out there and pretty much quickly rejected by some groups. The Athletic Department pretty much asked everyone what their ideas were for drumming up support and trying to get excitement back to the basketball games. Rick was in there so the obvious answer of "Win" wasn't an option for fear of basically getting the stink-eye from Rick. So some ideas were thrown out and none of them were really good. I'm just telling you what I saw and heard during my time.


Well said. TheWig and I spent a lot of time and effort on saving the Rowdies and I still have tons of emails with ideas I researched from every other sec school and other large schools (Texas, Kansas, UCONN) on how their student sections worked so well. In the end, it's about winning. and Rick didn't do his part there. (let that die there and don't turn this into a Stansbury thread please.....)

[esplanade91]

Guys, Im not sure that y'all have noticed but pledges still save seats. Also, the ones who end up leaving early are the drunk frats who get angry because things are not going well and leave to go party. Most of the non-greek fans are the ones that end up staying. A better way would be to give the greeks designated spots to sit through a lottery. If their section is missing after half time they lose their section.
Not disagreeing, but my last year they made it really hard to save more than 10 or so spots. Pledges still TRY and will always TRY. It doesn't work anymore, and when it does someone from event staff comes and makes them quit. I've watched it happen several times.

Drunk frat guys leaving for a party is always going to happen as long as MSU accepts women into the university. We can reduce it by making games actually fun to attend.

[bulldawg28]

Students should be placed behind the opposing team's bench.

[TheRef]

Students should be placed behind the opposing team's bench.

Talking football or basketball?

[drummerdawg]

This is minor and won't help with staying in game but could help the standing in line experience . A lot of students miss out on the Dawg Walk and stand for hours waiting to get in, so what if our players were able to make a special trip through the students after they come through the junction? And/or have the student line made to where they are right up next to the visiting team when their buses pull up to the stadium.

[hailmari]

My solution was always saving the heaviest partying for away game weekends. But that's just me, I hate being drunk before games because it keeps me from paying attention (and I nearly beat up a pledge or two). Then you add in being in the sun all day and $4 bottles of water to rehydrate on.. It just makes for a miserable time. Drinking happens either during or well after for me. If I'm sober, I can sit and cheer in the stadium all day. I also sneak in snacks..

I think the only solution to this nation wide issue is having students who are legitimately there to see football. Getting to the bar can be accomplished every other night of the year. Kids just gotta learn that football is more important than most everything else.

[ScoobaDawg]

Students should be placed behind the opposing team's bench.




Talking football or basketball?

If he is talking about football that would make very little difference and NEVER happen because that would be from the 35 to 35, the best tickets on the east side.
If he is talking Basketball that's against NCAA rules.

[shannondawg]

Guys, Im not sure that y'all have noticed but pledges still save seats. Also, the ones who end up leaving early are the drunk frats who get angry because things are not going well and leave to go party. Most of the non-greek fans are the ones that end up staying. A better way would be to give the greeks designated spots to sit through a lottery. If their section is missing after halftime, they lose their section.

You could be on to something with that idea. It would be really obvious as who was leaving enmass. Frats wouldn't want to lose their seating ,especially for the prime time games, and would encourage the members and pledges to stay. In this computer age, someone could design a program and print out id cards for each and every game. Its not that big a deal and with imagination could be handled. Don't just depend on those dumbasses over at the BDC to do come up with an idea and forbid the freaking idea that they could implement it.

While its a problem, its conforting to know that they have the same problem over in Tuscalooser.

[PassInterference]

I blame student attendance issues on social media. The microsecond the football game isn't exciting, groups and cliques via social media decide to go find some fun.