<p>OK, I just got back from dinner and one of my companions brought this up. He said he was commuting on an NJ Transit bus that had been used for Rutgers football games. There was a poster with a long list of conduct rules, mostly pertaining to not bringing alcohol into the stadium. He said that when he was in college many years ago, the appeal of games was as a party venue; you brought your liquor in your shirt pocket, you drank steadily for 2.5 hours, you sang and cheered with your peers, and you stumbled home. Of course the drinking age was 18. Now, you can’t bring alcohol into the stadium; you sit there, bored and cold, and there is no distraction. How many people ever really went to football games just to watch football? Not many. I thought it was an interesting perspective.</p>
<p>
I think there may be something to this as well. While girls are now participating in organized athletics as never before, football is not a “girl” sport. Many women are only interested in football to the extent that it’s a validated interest among men. Women don’t grow up imagining themselves as football stars.</p>
<p>My DD purposefully chose a school that did not have much of a football team. She hates big time sports, especially football. Just not the way she’s made.</p>
<p>I say, to each his/her own. On the other hand, my husband - a huge football fan and a co-owner of the Green Bay Packers - is sometimes inconsolable.</p>
<p>S1 will only look at schools w a football team. (D3 is OK). </p>
<p>D1 goes to a school w good team and went to 50% of home games a a freshman, a few last year. Her club sport, conflicts w most games, so I’m not sure how many she will get to this year.</p>
<p>NJSue, you may have a point there. Umich games are obviously very well attended despite my complaints about them, but I think they are having problems with the students not showing up until later in the game because they are doing their drinking elsewhere and not showing up until they are already good and drunk. I am not sure I disagree with banning the alcohol from the stadiums, though, based on the experiences I’ve had. Drunk college students really kind of suck to be around. I’d like to think if they were allowed to drink in the stadium they wouldn’t end up quite so drunk as they do when they throw back shots at 11am with the intention of getting hammered enough to last them through the game, but I don’t really think I believe that’s true. Call me a cynic, but in this day and age when kids want to drink they get sloppy drunk as fast as they can and I don’t think anything makes any difference.</p>
<p>whenhen - ND has not seen a decline in attendance, no matter what the record. Tickets for Saturday’s game are $105. Game days are a great experience. I’ve attended other Big 10 football games, and IMO, there’s no comparison.</p>
<p>“The reality of our budgeting process is that football ticket revenue is critical to our ability to contribute to the University’s academic programs and finance our other varsity sports. We are fortunate in that every Notre Dame home football game has been sold out for more than four decades,” said Swarbrick.(athletic director)</p>
<p>I’m one who does believe that the current drinking laws encourage binge drinking among the 18-20 cohort. I do think that if students of this age were permitted to drink legally in public, they would drink less, and drink more responsibly. I concede that the current laws have resulted in a statistical reduction of drunk driving accidents and deaths, but they have also had what Edward Tenner has called “revenge effects” in other ways. I think current attitudes and practices re alcohol on college campuses are very dysfunctional compared to the “old days.”</p>
<p>I’ll say the apathy for myself. I don’t like football to begin with, and really could care less whether the university I go to wins or whether the university other people choose to go to wins. I simply don’t care.</p>
<p>Let’s try answering these questions with reasons that we could easily eliminate.</p>
<p>Well it can’t be because the current generation has no stress to deal with.
Well it can’t be because they are on academic overload.
Well it can’t be because colleges are so affordable that students can easily buy tickets.
Well it can’t be because the dirty water dogs are only $5.00 and a slurp of soda is $3.50.
Well it can’t be because the media hypes games to the point of smaller teams being shamed for trying their best.
Well it can’t be because the college teams & stadiums consume huge funds to operate instead of going toward decreased tuition.
Well it can’t be because the game has become all about strength enhancing supplements to help win a game with a smidge of an edge.
Well it can’t be because of Corporate sponsors of Pro-football stadiums and Corporations spending millions of dollars for a 30 second Super Duper Bowl commercial while students have to take out education loans that will strap them financially for the rest of their lives.
Well it can’t be because when students graduate they could continue their allegiance & attend a Pro-football team game for the cost of 4 tanks of gas or a one month payment on their student loan so all the players on that Pro team should not have to scrimp and save to put a down payment on a quaint little fixer upper home in the country.
Well it can’t be because the sport might have become a financial mega billion dollar industry instead of a SPORT and having TEAM players instead of STARS.
HMMM! I wonder what the answers really are because I used to like to play football with a group of friends and go to college games at a stadium where the bleachers consisted of a sun-bleached wooden bench (Yale) and the memory of eating an affordable dirty water dog.
Yes, I too used to be a FAN of the SPORT and I sure would like to know the reason why I don’t even care who’s playing on the weekend or about football anymore.</p>
<p>S’ school doesn’t have a football team. Just as well since he wrote in one of his essays that he’s not interested in painting himself any particular team color and screaming like a dope.</p>
<p>Plus 60 minutes of actual playtime crammed into 3 hours…what’s not to love. :D</p>
<p>@dietz199
You’ve got a hell of a smart boy there. I pictured the exact dope that he speaks of! And to think the dope spent oodles to have the liberty to do that.</p>
<p>I believe the younger generation is sending the silent message to the Big
Business NFL that they aren’t going to get duped anymore.</p>
<p>It’s time they took the so-called ‘Sport’ out of the schools and let the big NFL boys figure out how they’re going to prepare players from the ground up instead of all of us funding/preparing these cash cows from childhood.</p>
<p>I’ve been to every Michigan football game since I was a freshman. Get there before kickoff, stay for the whole game. I post on a Michigan football forum and am a paid subscriber to a recruiting service site. I’d say I’m a pretty passionate football fan, and sports fan in general.</p>
<p>That being said, I’ve definitely noticed the lack of interest. A lot of my friends don’t really want to go to the games anymore.</p>
<p>I abhor football, so no, I do not attend games. In fact, my stepfather is a football fanatic and attempted several times to get me into it, but I don’t see the fun in watching a bunch of sweaty men jump on top of and fumble around for a ball. </p>
<p>I think football is actually detrimental to the new “generation.” As an above poster said, football is a a game that is tailor-made for short attention spans.</p>
<p>In all honesty, I cannot wait for football season to end. Seeing as how I live in the South, football season is particularly unbearable.</p>
<p>Football promotes tribalism and is treated like a religion. The only skill implemented in the game is by the QB and the coach and everyone else is there because they were blessed with the right genes. No rational being would take pleasure in watching a no-skill sport. It is a subject of conversation by people who have devoted highschool/college to playing because they have no other skills or hobbies in life. Keep in mind this is only an opinion but getting obsessed over your team is no different than two nerds talking about their favorite video game.</p>
<p>We love football. In high school, my brother was QB of state champion team. I was a cheerleader. sister was in the marching band. Our small southern town lived for football Friday nights. DH and I went to our respective colleges’ games pretty faithfully. </p>
<p>Our sons played Pop Warner and h.s. football. Many times we’d go to three games a week.<br>
They would only consider colleges with D1 football. Home football games were a whole weekend event for them and their friends. They would say their big state u’s football games were one of the highlights of their college years. Both have graduated but go back for football weekends at their schools whenever they can.</p>
<p>Both my kids chose schools without football teams, as did my wife. I went to a DIII school where football was/is big, and I went to one game in four years, and absolutely hated it. School would be a better place without it.</p>
<p>I hate having students bash each others’ brains in for the entertainment of alumni so that they can be cajoled into giving money.</p>
<p>Here’s a guy who may suffer from brain damage for the rest of his life, and the talk is all about who can replace him at linebacker, his loss of an NFL career, and the nonetheless “bright future” he has in front of him.</p>
<p>Husband is the only one who likes football. Me, our daughters, and their SO’s don’t care at all about the game. I would love to see our schools treat sports with less emphasis. It always amazed me that high schools would cut classes for monetary reasons but would never touch football. And how many kids went pro?</p>
<p>My daughter eliminated several great schools specifically because of the poor attendance at their football games. She’s a real girly-girl, but like any self-respecting Texan, she could not tolerate an empty football stadium! She wound up at ND. :)</p>