[NU Sports] Tipping Point Near ?

[mlinhardt at netzero.net]

I understand your concern.  Sitting next to "corporate seats" at other 
events can be very depressing as they often have no excitement or 
connection to the home team.

Northwestern does an excellent job of providing highly discounted 
family packages, but not for the premium seats.

Northwestern also went back to free student admission a few years back 
which is important.

I just do not see of an easy way to make the tickets accesible to 
Northwestern fans and not to opposing fans.

Until Northwestern becomes Chicago's team Bucky, Bumblebees, Tree 
Waste, and Fail Fail will have a substantial amount of butts planted 
in the stadium.  Given that fact Northwestern might as well charge 
them for the privilege vs. as someone else pointed out having the 
scalpers make all the money.

-- cherron604 at aol.com wrote:
I guess I am just a bit worried about the way this could eventually 
play out...
 
The University owns the seats - of course, they can sell them for 
whatever price they want.  And since we are all fans of he program, 
there are probably a few things we want in a football crowd:
 
a) fairly packed houses, with 
b) enthusiastic fans.
 
I am worried that we are maybe further from goal a) than we have been 
since the really bad old days.  I had not noticed this previously, but 
we fell to 80th (out of 119) last year in Div I attendance.  We were 
in the 60's as recently as 2001, and we were 47th back in 1998.  And 
2007 attendance could be even worse...maybe 20K for the 3 non-
conference foes as well as IU ?  25 for Minny, 35 for Iowa and 42 for 
Michigan ?  And the biggest problem with awful attendance is a lousy 
home-field advantage in the poorly attended games, and actually being 
outnumbered in big games (see OSU last season).
 
And while the NU fans at the games are enthusiastic (to a degree...), 
if we don't start packing the place with real, honest-to-goodness 
fans, we run the risk of drawing more affluent, less-attached fans, 
and this too will hurt us down the road.
 
Can we possibly start marketing this program to Chicago and Suburban 
fans and families who are our one hope for keeping out opposing fans ?
 
Chuck Herron   Tech '85