I am worried, worried that UB's football team will fall back to the D-IAA due to lack of attendance. (NCAA has been talking about dropping the lowest teams, and UB is number one on that list) I'm from Syracuse where football is huge. I went to most games, and they were tons of fun. People were actually into the game, it was like a mini-NFL game. People indulged in America's favorite past times: beer and football.
My friends and I tailgate at the UB games in the Special Events Lot between the campus mail station and the Flint apartments. It's tons of fun, we get hammered, play pong, BBQ and taunt the away teams' fans, then stumble into the game to taunt the away team players and be rowdy. UB football is going nowhere without the students' help. It is the crazy students that fire the team up. It's pathetic that UB can beat Army and Rutgers away, but then when it comes to home games against teams like Eastern Michigan and Lehigh, we can't win.
I'm not trying to tell the students that they need to go to the games; they will if they want to. How can we, the students, get more students to go to the games? Simple, we complain to the administration. They're the reason why no one cares about UB football. The bottom line is the promotions are absolutely terrible. No students care about "Rocketman" and Screech and Tony Hawk. They care about having a good time. They need to sell beer at the game. Fine, go ahead, donate the stadium to Amherst, sell beer, it needs to get done. I know they're worried about drunken college kids doing stupid things, but guess what, you want to be like Ohio State, Penn State and big time football schools? Then beer will be sold at the football games, students will go crazy and be happy, there's no other way that this goal could be reached.
The Athletic Department wants UB to be a big time football school. To do this, we need to win games. To do this we need to attract more fans to cheer for the team. To do this we need to provide more entertainment than just the game (while the team's in the building stages, at least). To do this we need to do a number of little things, but the biggest would be to sell beer at the football games. We need not to bring Screech to the games, or have some guy fly around at halftime for a couple seconds. To do this we need students, faculty, alumni, the people of the community, even your dog. Get everyone to complain and get the administration to sell beer at the football games.
