<ol>
<li><p>Smart phone</p></li>
<li><p>HDTV</p></li>
<li><p>Short attention span</p></li>
<li><p>Apathy, “coolness factor,” just don’t consider the live experience as important. Like smartphones and HDTVs, they’d rather experience life through megapixels?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My oldest said he didn’t go to many games because his team wasn’t very good. That doesn’t explain why he didn’t attend many basketball games, as that team was good. He played several sports in high school, so this lack of school spirit was disappointing.</p>
<p>My youngest goes to a big sports school. I asked him if he went to the game last week and he answered, “for a while.” I asked him why he left and he said he had triathlon team practice. So he’s not sitting around. Just wish teams could support each other.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure it’s regional whether people even follow football. I went to exactly one game at my college-I didn’t know a single player and really didn’t care.WAY before smart phones and HDTV. I went to every game in HS because I knew the kids. But in Seattle, the UW games stop traffic in all directions and jam the buses with fans-no drop here. And H was talking about a college stadium somewhere that holds double our numbers-people have been known to bring dirt from “their” college town (even if they didn’t attend) for the birth of their kids so they will be born on “college town” soil. That just sounds insane to me. Of course, I am a person who tries to be anywhere else when H sits down to watch his football games on Sundays, and Mondays, and Thursdays, and Saturdays…</p>
<p>I vote-kids have better things to do in some colleges than to watch a bunch of guys they’ll never meet run around banging into each other.</p>
<p>FWIW, I am somewhat sympathetic to Consolation’s viewpoint. A kid a friend of mine knew in upstate NY just died from a head-to-head hit in a HS football game. It made national news.</p>
<p>I don’t like the idea of recruited athletes with scholarship.
I much prefer thinking of the guy in my dorm trying out for the team and then going to cheer him on as a friend.</p>
<p>The current recruited scholarship athletes are like a priveledged population and its hard to connect with them, cheer for them. </p>
<p>I believe in student athletes…and I love sports. I just don’t like privaledged classes of people.</p>
<p>Only reason I went to my DIII school’s football games is because they were usually Saturday around lunch time. I’d grab my lunch at the dining hall to go and eat while watching the game. The lack of any sort of admission cost also helped boost attendance into the double digits.</p>
<p>I went to Michigan. I was poor. I scalped the tickets for the big name games (OSU, ND, MSU) and went to the laughers for the football Saturday experience.</p>
<p>Back in my day…we all showed up at halftime. We had the world’s worst football team but an excellent band whose half time shows were notoriously off-color and filled with in jokes. So…we all went to see the band. BTW, you got in free with a student ID, which is the way I think it should be.</p>
<p>Hockey now, was a different matter. We had a good hockey team and to someone not that interested in sports, the games were more exciting. </p>
<p>I think my kid went to 2 football games in 4 years. One was parents’ weekend freshmen year. Kid actually enjoys football but was busy with another EC most weekends.</p>
<p>My kids weren’t fond of the crowds and drunks. I don’t blame them as I’m not fond of crowds or drunks either. S surprised me, as I thought he’d go to the games because the team had a great rep, but after the 1st year, he seemed to lose interest. I think he preferred watching in comfort via cable or internet rather than in crowded stadium with drunks.</p>
<p>Both my oldest 2 chose colleges that have no football team. I think D went to one basketball game her senior year. She played a club sport, no one ever went to watch her games. Son has gone to a couple of hockey games at his school over the years. Youngest at a D3 LAC went to a football game. She plays a sport also, and I don’t think they draw much of a crowd. Our kids were not brought up to follow sports closely, and the rabid sports fans around here turned them off. They would rather do other things than sit and watch a sporting event, unless they had a friend playing.</p>
<p>I had season football and hockey tickets my first year at umich. The second year I just got hockey tickets. I only occasionally went to hockey games, and almost never went to football when I had tickets.</p>
<p>The thing was, I’d go to the game, and we’d stand for hours-- they stand the whole time. My back hurt like hell. It’s like 85+ degrees outside and we are packed like sardines, trying not to slip on the spilled beer that’s been snuck in or vomit. I once had paramedics trying to revive the person next to me because he passed out in the bleachers. There are bees. Water costs a fortune and you can’t bring in any bottles to bring your own. We’re standing in direct sunlight the entire time. Have I mentioned the bees? And you have to get up in the morning and walk to the stadium fairly early for a college student Saturday in order to get to the stadium for that noon kickoff. Then, everybody leaves at once-- and you are all starving and sweating. By the time you get back to your dorm, every shower in the building is occupied and every table in every restaurant in the city is full. Forget going out to eat on football Saturdays unless you go before the students get back from the game. And the game takes up the ENTIRE DAY.</p>
<p>I’d get to around half time and think, “I could be at home right now, watching from the comfort of my couch-- SITTING DOWN-- and shower and go out to eat before any of these idiots even get home.”</p>
<p>To me it was an experience I wouldn’t trade, it’s a rite of passage to go to a Michigan game, but I didn’t need the season tickets. Hockey was a hundred times more fun, but I was too busy to go too often. I wish I’d made time to go more.</p>
<p>I think the popular cultural prestige of football is in decline, in no small part because of the criminals and thugs who seem to make up a not-insignificant portion of the NFL these days. The idea of football as a wholesome, character-building activity for the youth seems hopelessly outdated. The emerging information about brain damage does not help.</p>
<p>When I was growing up, it used to be practically mandatory to at least fake an interest in football. Now it’s becoming just another niche interest, which is fine.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, my kids have a condition which makes prolonged standing dangerous (it is extremely physically draining to them). They have a hard time shopping or waiting in lines for this reason. That’s another reason they stopped attending sports events. At football, the entire student section stands the entire game. S would sit in the opponents section so he could sit, but that rather defeated the point of attending the game.</p>
<p>My oldest is a freshman in the marching band, so yes. Also pretty into the whole school spirit thing. </p>
<p>I went to a D3 college with D1 hockey. We waited in line 30 days for hockey tickets. We drove to Boston for the ECAC playoffs and to Detroit for the NCAA Final 4. I never once went to a football game, though. Once, I was walking across campus on my way to the library and there was a football game being played right below the walkway. I paused to watch a couple of plays and someone tried to charge me for a ticket. There were maybe 100 people down in the stands.</p>
<p>I suspect the answer is there are probably a lot of explanations. After Penn State, where part of the blame for the Sandusky abuse scandal was on the power the football program had (or perceived as part of the blame), and some may be turned off by the arrogance of the big football programs, rather then feeling kinship for it. College students are very different then the were generations ago, there just isn’t the kind of identity with sports programs there once was, many kids simply care if the school can get them into a decent career path after school, not whether the bulldogs are good. </p>
<p>If the tickets cost them money (I went to a school that was division III for sports, so they didn’t charge, given few kids went) that could be a factor, too. </p>
<p>I also wonder how much of football crowds was made up of students, the writer Damon Runyon wrote a story about a crew of characters trying to scalp tickets to the Harvard/Yale Football game (this would be set in the 20’s), and the leader of the crew said that it was easy to get kids to sell their tickets because being young, there were a lot of things they might have felt was time better spent, like going to the Follies in NYC or the local speakeasy…:). </p>
<p>Personally, even though I am a football fan, I don’t think, even with a big school like U Mich or Alabama, that I would be all that hyped into going to games, the games are just too big, too crazy, for me to want to go.</p>
<p>UGA is vastly more selective than it was 10 years ago, and from what alumns familiar with the school have told me, noticeably more “academic” than when they attended. It could be that both Bama and UGA are now attracting a different type of student than in the past. Anecdotally, many people in my department at OU hate game days because they regard football as a detriment to studying. In other departments, this attitude is nowhere near as prevalent.</p>
<p>I wonder if schools like Stanford and Notre Dame have also experienced a significant decline in attendance (accounting for things such as a winning/losing season). Has the same been true for schools like UWyoming or KU which have not experienced any noticeable increase in selectivity?</p>
<p>Neither of my kids attended colleges with football teams, although they are both athletic.
One attended football games in high school, although as she said, it was primarily to support the band that played at games.
The other Ds high school did not have a football team.
I don’t see a football team as a requirement for an education, although I do think physical fitness, athleticism & sportsmanship are important.</p>