College football Week 1 thread

Purdue and Wisconsin are the only two schools in that conference I like.

Hey, remember when Fat 10 overloads poo-Poohed and snickered at weeknight football? Yeah, how’d that work for you?

 

Halftime score of the night: UC Davis 35, San Jose State 21. Davis QB is 25-of-35 for 354 yards and two TDs.

 

A story from more than 30 years ago, relayed by the chief recruiter for Cal football. It is Earthquake Awareness Week at the Berkeley campus. It also is a big recruiting weekend for the football team. The Earthquake folks put orange traffic cones on the fault lines on campus. One of them runs right down the middle of the football field, from goal post to goal post.
The recruits are taken to see the stadium. One of them asks the coach why the orange cones are there.
Coach said, "We've having a 10K."

 

Go Bears!

Cal needed to do something with the stadium, they threw in a football training complex as well. The plans were made when Tedford had the team in the top 25 - but then the team went to hell, the economy went to hell, the players weren't graduating and Sonny Dykes somehow found his way to Berkeley.

The school that did it right was Stanford, downsizing their stadium (they still don't fill it). ASU is shrinking theirs as well.
The kicker is that a lot of schools require a "donation" on top of the season tickets price for premium areas. So when fans stop coming to games, you don't get the ticket revenue, you don't get the "donation." You don't get the concession sales and you don't get the parking revenue - while most schools still staff gamedays like every one is going to be a sellout.

 

The article talks about how schools pad their attendance numbers. It appears the most MAC schools draw about 5,000 people (which probably includes the band and the stadium support staff) but pad their attendance enough to say they draw 15,000 a game which is the minimum for D-I football.

 

I do believe we are seeing a moderate change in "status symbols" and college athletics. 25 years ago, that symbol was the rich couple that paid for their seats at the 50. They wrote checks to the athletic department, got to eat little smokies before the game with the other boosters and that was their social circle.

Who under 45 does this in 2018?

If you want good seats, buy 'em in the secondary market. No need to sit through the crappy September schedule, all while writing $2,500 checks for, essentially, a PSL to the college program.

The "cool" status symbol now is watching the games at home and commenting in real time on Twitter.

 

As the man says, if that story ain't true it should be

 

I've found that the worst part of going to/covering a college football game is that you miss all the other games. I'd rather stay home.

 

When I was covering the MAC, I'd say most Saturdays there are actually a good number of people in the seats. It's those weeknight ESPN games where they're really fudging the numbers. I've been to weeknight games where there aren't more than 3,000 in the stadium and they announced 17,000.

 

When I get out to a D-I tailgate and game, I enjoy it. But it's close to sensory overload over a period of 4-5 hours. As far as being comfortable and in sync with the people you're around, I'll go D-II for the most part, maybe FCS. Which I will 3-4 times this fall.

 

Best deal in Boston sports is Harvard football. For every game except Yale once every two years, tickets are super cheap ($20 will put you between the 40s) and because Harvard is a big place, there's lots of nearby parking (The B-school is like $5 and a three block walk). If you don't want to tailgate, the Harvard Square T stop is a give minute walk to the stadium. It's very pleasant.