Sorry I cannot blame anyone from not showing up, what we have seen this year is not football, it is not fun and exciting, that is why the fans are staying away. The fans came out early in the year and the coaches and team did not show up now the fans are doing the same.
I have been embarrased by the students all year. I am sick and tired of them whining and carrying on about the alumni being too quite or sitting during games when 95% of them don't even bother to show up for games. The stadium filled up fairly well yesterday -- granted more slowly than normal -- but the student sections were the gaping holes. The students are a bunch of spoiled, whiny brats who don't have any idea what true loyalty to their team means. We alumni may not be loud all the time, but at least we are still there for them, still trying to cheer them on. The alumni were there before the greatness and we are there after it. The students jump ship like flea infested rats after the first bad season in 13 years. Pathetic.
I feel sorry for any children of some "fans" in our midst. I can imagine that if some 9 y.o. boy does not play lights out every week or stinks it up sometimes, he has to walk home, sleep on the roof and find his own food. Imagine some poor daughter singing off key during the Christmas pageant. She will have to work the streets to meet her needs. No way should they be supported if they don't perform all the time at the peak level. The "fans" should divorce the OC or DC role the wife may take. Boo her! Boo-hoo.
I went to my first game in '69 and have been a season ticket holder the last thirty years. This year I gave my son my tickets for this year only and yesterday was my first game of the season. I have never seen so many empty seats. Ever. The older fans were not very loud because they all seem to be stunned by what has happened and have no idea why. The people who sit around me have been going for at least twenty years and are befuddled about what has happened. I did not hear any booing in my immediate area but did hear some at a few points in the game. Nothing like late akers or mackovic, but some. We are all disappointed but most of us expect things to turn around. It did seem to me that a lot of the real aholes were not at the game-----you know, the people who don't know squat about the game but know we should be running the score up.
Easy fix, offer those out of the world deals they provide (all sports pass) on a first come first serve basis.
Kick around the country (or whatever its called) should be for students only. JetBlue should offer the RT tickets plus $500 in scholly $$ if selected, $1000 in scholly $$ if they hit the FG. To be eligible for the lottery you would have to be in the student section 30 mins before kick. Would that help...?
Stat- I'm in 103 and you can't hear the band that well. I'm not kidding....OSU and Baylor bands literally drowned them out for half the upper deck crowd.
Ever since the recent expansion of the stadium seats have been easier to come by. The scalpers even last year had a hard time getting rid of tickets. Now if we had better opponents scheduled that would obviously help. Texas is at the level where they need to consistently play the big boys and I think for fans and players alike a lackluster schedule is a downer. I remember DKR for Ohio St. and that was a great atmosphere before and during the game. I know we have great loyal fans and our schedule has been detracting from that and the Big 12 is not as good as it used to be. Even before this season started, thinking about nu and cu leaving, really had me worried about the future landscape around here and the Big 12. Aside from all that we need to beat aggy and win the bowl game. Hook Em!
There may have been a good reason, but Tex Moncrief's suite on the East side was completely emply. Just saying.....
For the students to not show up is pretty lame. Might have something to do with the changing make up of the student body, but then again it might not. It is sad when you can't fill the stadium, but with the product on the field this year it's not suprising.
Maybe you FANS should remember that the University exists first and foremost for the students. When I attended we got access to all athletic events (with a draw for football seats) and even basketball for about $35 per semester. If the product on the field sucks... it's not the students fault.
Granted, that showing is pretty bad, but you guys are being a little too harsh on the students. This is really the box office's fault. Just so all you old folks know the current process if you don't already know... Pretty much every student who will want to go to a game orders the season ticket over the summer: ~$70 for LASP with tuition (i.e. seemingly nothing) and ~$80 for the actual season pass (i.e. $10 per game). So to a student, a ticket to the game seems like about $10, that is, if they even think about it at all. Now, with the season tickets, they get the even more convenient "print-at-home" tickets that I'm sure you've seen. This is great and everything because you just get the email and there's never any reason to actually go to the box office, etc... Students will occasionally have reasons not to go. These are just facts of a dumb college student's life. Out of town, need to study, too hungover, friend has a wedding (my excuse this week), their favorite band has a concert in town that night, sweet *** frat party going on instead, whatever. Belmont has made it very difficult for a student to sell his or her ticket to someone. Nobody wants a student ticket because nobody can use it unless they have an LASP (Which finding someone who got the LASP and DIDN't get the season ticket is pretty hard to come by). You can go get a hardcopy printed out (for $10, no less) and then any student could use it, but c'mon. To most students, it's just not worth the effort to get that $10 back that you spent several months ago. It's better to just hold on to them in case you end up going at the last minute. Plus, a lot of the students see the games as more of a social thing, especially the sorority/frat crowd, so they go when their friends go. I think they just need to start letting students sell specific tickets back to the box office they aren't going to be able to use. More people would be able to enjoy the game, and the box office would probably make more money anyways (buying the $10 student ticket back, and selling it to a joe schmoe for $50+ right before kickoff) I guess the box office just doesn't want to deal with that? Bottom line, most of the alumni (I am one too now... I spent $400 for my season tickets!) see it as more of a waste than the student who didn't even buy their $10 ticket. (I'm sure most of the parents purchased them).
There is no such thing as a "sweet *** frat party" during a UT football game. I am generally a student apologist. I want students to have better seats at basketball games, especially. But stop with the excuses for the student section at DKR. It's abominable. It's just incredibly far removed from how things were when I was a student, when the alumni were the missing-in-action ones and the student sections were always jam-packed. It's been noticeable most of this year. There is simply a glaring gap at DKR these days, and it's not the old fogies. The excuses here are, frankly pathetic and insulting. Get your asses to the game.
Hey, I'm with you on the fact that students aren't showing, but I'm just saying that the students not being able to sell their tickets is the major contributing factor. This season, I might guess that maybe on average 1/4 of students didn't make it to a particular game. You can't tell me that on average, 1/4th of alumni with season tickets didn't try and sell their tickets to any particular game. The students (for the most part) can't sell their tickets to someone else willing to go, unlike on the west side. I'm just saying that you can't compare how empty either sides of the stadium are and say one is being more loyal than the other simply because the tickets are not equal. Does no one agree with this???
We aren't the only school that is having problems filling the stadiums- bad students or not. While watching football today I noticed just how few real sellouts there were. The Tech stadium looked like a ghost town. I've never seen any stadium have that bad an attendance. The UGA/GTech game had unfilled sections. We're not the only ones.
Between the time I started at Texas in 1998 and now, student seating has changed quite a bit. I was normally in section 27. If you don't notice that students seem to be further from the field with a great majority of them now in the upper deck, you haven't been paying attention. I've had a brother and three cousins go to Texas since I finished there and I feel sorry for them because they don't experience the game like we did. My cousin currently enrolled has tickets in the upper deck and goes every game. I sat up there with her once as I gave my tickets to a buddy to use. It wasn't exciting. I would tend to agree that most people missing from the student sections were filling in other areas of the stadium. I know I had more students around me the last couple games. I used my friend's tickets in section 7 for Florida Atlantic cause he couldn't get $30 for them. Those seats were empty. When people that have chairback seats don't want to go to the games (yes, there were lots of empties around me) you gotta cut students a break that have to sit high in the endzones and upperdeck.
These guys have a good point. If the exact same percentage of students with season tickets as other fans with season tickets don't show up to any particular game, the student section will be the more empty section, because pretty much the only people they can sell tickets to, or even give them away for free to, are the other people who are already going to be at the game anyway.
I always sat in the flash-card section on the 40 yard line as a student. Now all the students seem to be in the end-zones and upper deck. Always tailgated on the roof of the parking garage next to Scholz' until the first game one year when we pulled up to the garage and were told to go away because it was now Foundation only... took me 10 years after graduating to join the Foundation because of that. I guess my point is that if you **** on the students now you'll pay for it later. The University is for the students NOW and as a Texas-Ex I just get to come along for the ride and reminisce about the glory years (well I guess the Mackovic years weren't exactly "glory" years but you get the point).
