As a student at ou I can vouch that students are coming to the games interested. Talking to students around campus everyone looks forward to going to the games saturday night. There are a number of reasons why we left last weeks game early.

1. It was cold out

Even being a diehard fan myself I was forced to leave after we got a two score lead in the forth. It was an unexpected chilly night and I think it caught many of us off guard. That probably took 1/3 of the student crowd out.

2. TV commercials / late Saturday night

No student at ou that isn't 100% into football is going to want to spend 8-11 on a Saturday going to a football game. On a 7-9 Saturday game things would be very different. But there are so many things to do at ou it's going to be hard to keep students engaged.

Ways to fix this would be maybe fixing the scoreboard so you can actually see it. Selling beer at the game would also do wonders but I don't see this ever happening. But the biggest thing is just try and find way to engage the crowd. How to do this?? Unsure. but the athletic department definitely need to change what they're doing now because it just doesn't work.

With all this being said many of you are over reacting this was one of the biggest crowds in school history and even with the 2/3 of the students leaving we still probably had a bigger student section then any other MAC school for the 1st two weeks.

It's a football game, not a Kenny Chesney concert. In following OUr team, I've experience some of the best environments in college football (Tennessee, VA Tech, O$U, Penn State, Louisville, and others dating back years). They're not doing anything overly special to "engage" the crowd. What do you want them to do??

At those places there's a few more bells and whistles on the video board/sound system...and maybe beer sales (or other enhanced concessions)...but I don't think they offer all that much more. Beyond, of course, the crowds of 80,000+ rapid fans. I'd certainly put our game atmosphere way above anything else I've seen in the MAC.

+1. This whole thing is silly. We've just had back-to-back top 5 crowds. A few short years ago, a sellout was something we could realistically do every 10 years. We're just getting greedy now...

In defense of the students as a recent graduate, you can't play one lame opponent after the next, year after year, and expect the 18-22 year olds to flip a switch when one team that is perceived as good rolls into town (unless they're really really good).

It's going to awfully tough to kick the half time exodus. A habit I see continuing uninhibited until at least Cinci and Kansas travels to Athens in the coming years.

The tower side is our best chance to chance the culture of our crowd. The students will match the noise coming from that side on third down.

We should be asking ourselves why their fans are so much faster than ours. There is no reason our fans can't be as rapid as BCS fans. Maybe we should all be showing up early to run wind sprints--prove to the players and to the football world that we are, indeed, rapid.

I've bought season tickets every year and sit every game in the student section. I like sitting right in front of the 110 to be exact. Nothing like taking on the full brunt of that wall of noise the entire game. I'll probably lose my hear by age 35, but it wil be worth it. Sitting in the student section gives me the oppurtunity to stand the whole game and make as much noise as I want without worrying about Betty and Francis getting upset behind me. I am surprised more of the vocal fans on the Tower side havn't migrated over yet.

P.S. The only downside is having to listen to the college students talk about the latest Beiber video coming out or getting up for the 14th time of the quarter to go check their makeup. Pros and cons...

We'll add that to the list of excuses people don't stay:

1. Game starts too late
2. Weather not warm enough
3. Too much time during TV timeouts
4. Kegger on High Street
5. Scoreboard not entertaining enough
6. Opponents not high-profile enough.

[QUOTE=MariettaCatFanatic]

P.S. The only downside is having to listen to the college students talk about the latest Beiber video coming out or getting up for the 14th time of the quarter to go check their makeup. Pros and cons...[QUOTE]

By makeup, I bet you don't mean their face paint...

I don't disagree with this assessment for the most part. But when we have a thread about students being turned away at the gates and others talking about going to the next level, it frustrates me to no end that we have fans that will not even stay the entire nationally televised game to support a great team and a great coach. And for what? The bars? Long TV timeout boredom?

Yes, students are from a different, on-demand generation. But yet, students in other college towns stay and support their winning teams. Some aspire to be programs like this (let's expand the stadium, let's move to a bigger conference), but then our fans can't back it up by simply staying to the end of a close rivalry game.

I'm from the generation -- like many others on this board -- that sat through Utah St. games in the rain, that endured an 0-11 season, that would make jokes about the potential of ESPN coming to Athens. Now that we have winning seasons, bowl games and ESPN games, too many are taking this for granted.

I agree about the scoreboard - it really sticks out as deficient.

Actually if you browse any of the forums of the teams that you mentioned, one of the usual complaints is... you guessed it, students leaving at halftime. :)

When you have a stadium that seats 100,000 it's just not as noticable.

First of all, I'll note that kids do listen to entire albums. It's just on spotify instead of a compact disc (or a cassette tape, 8 track, record, whatever). 

Now that that is out of the way, I'll say I don't buy your entire argument. Kids today aren't any different. I would venture to guess that old men were in their living rooms saying this stuff 20, 30, and 40 years ago--now we just say it on an internet message board. The next generation is always deficient in a million ways and they are always ruining America, football, and apple pie. 

Kids like football. They like to party. They make a compromise and attend a little of both. If we had better opponents the football would trump the party. If we were consistently ranked, football would trump the party. Right now, we have to share the students, but more and more of them are staying for the whole game. 

I will agree with you though that it takes a special kind of person to appreciate a football game on a Saturday night from 8-11 in a chilly atmosphere. But that hasn't changed with this generation, it's always been that way.

Many accurate opinions on this board.  Everytime I come back to Athens with fellow alums, I have a hard time getting my buddies to leave Court Street to even get to the game.  The draw of uptown is real, and honestly, who here doesn't understand that.  I've had fond experiences at the Pub that I've never gotten from Peden.  It is what it is.

Better opponents would help, no doubt.  IMO, we still haven't had that breakthrough win in football that can elevate ones committment and passion.

We have had that monumental win in basketball: multiple times, and recently.  Those types of victories stay with you for a long, long time.  If you've noticed, we don't have a mass exodus from the Convo at the half ever.

Step back from the ledge, and just appreciate how far the program has actually come.  I remember the 0-11 days, and they were god awful.