Lack of Communication

Is the student section of the stadium going to be general admission?  If not, how can my friends and I sit together?  Should we all show up together to pick up our tickets?  What about block seating for academic and social clubs, or the Greek organizations?  Is there a plan in the works to accommodate group seating?  In the future, will one representative from an organization be able to show up at the ticket office with the student ids from all of the members and pick up the tickets for the whole group so that they may sit together?

These are only a few of the questions that remain unanswered going into the week of the first game in our new on-campus stadium.  Many students are still asking where they go to get their tickets for the game.  I only knew about it because I was lucky enough to have an employee of the athletic department in one of my summer classes.  Otherwise, I never would have seen the email about student vouchers, since it went straight into my spam catcher.  

One final question.  Why has the communication not been better regarding the football season?  It seems to me that the students should be a bit higher on the priority list when it comes to football.  Isn’t the school trying to build a winning program?  To do that, you need better recruits.  To get better recruits, you need a few things: a winning team, which we are supposedly working on; for offensive recruits, you need a sexy, productive offense and likewise for the defense; you need to have your former players playing on Sundays in the NFL; lastly, your program needs to be playing in nationally televised games.

To accomplish that last thing, you need a frenzied atmosphere.  Yes, a frenzied atmosphere could be  listed in the things you need to land top-notch recruits, but it’s a two-edged sword.  ESPN doesn’t want to broadcast a game with a silenced crowd, just like coaches and Athletic Directors don’t want to invite potential recruits to games with lame crowds.  Potential recruits want to see fans going nuts, like they do in The Swamp.  They want to hear the roar of the crowd, the thunder of thousands of feet stomping on the bleachers and the deafening chant of the fight song.  These are the same things networks want to see.

But networks and recruits won’t see those things from a crowd filled with local businessmen and women.  They won’t see them from local executives from Suntrust or Bank of America, who are only at the game as invited guests of an administration hoping to sell naming rights to the stadium or to gain enough monetary commitments to ensure that future stages of the stadiums construction are financed.  That’s who all the tickets for the first game are going to.  Not to the students, who would likely be the ones creating the frenzy within the crowd.    

The school is more concerned with it’s image within the community than with the student body.  The school is banking on the old Field of Dreams mentality of, “If you build it, they will come.”  

They seem to think that the stadium alone will turn this program in the same direction that other young programs like USF and FAU are heading.  Without the support of the students, it won’t happen.  Like I’ve said before, the lack of interest in the sports culture at FIU is amazing to me.  I know this entry is making me seem like an anti sports guy but I am far from that.  I’ll be wearing my blue and gold to every sporting event that I can make it too this year and next.  Hopefully well beyond that, too.  But there aren’t many like me on campus.   When I asked other students about going to the open house at the stadium last week, they looked at me as if I was nuts.  I get similar looks when  I ask about football game attendance.  It seems that, for the most part, the student body could care less about football at FIU and ignoring them and leaving them out of the loop isn’t going to change that.

It all goes back to the age old chicken versus the egg question.  Can you get the support of the student body without a winning program?  Probably.  But can you get a winning program without the support of the student body?  The administration seems to be banking on it. 

Based on the results of last weeks poll, like me, you are all most annoyed by the know it all in class.  Thanks to the nine of you who voted.

ELI3