Forum › Forum › Lehigh Sports › Lehigh Football › POLL: Season Opener Night Game at Goodman? › Reply To: POLL: Season Opener Night Game at Goodman?
I think the attendance declines aren’t attributable to any one Lehigh president or one Lehigh policy, they are systemic and cut across all levels of college football. For lack of a better word, you know what the real culprit is? Globalization of sports. Every sporting event competes with every other sport now – a good EPL soccer game competes with Penn State football which competes with Lehigh football which could compete with a critical baseball pennant game. Thirty years ago, college football was a consuming, all-day event without much real competition. It’s simply not anymore.
I do think draconian tailgate rules do have an overall effect, but in that vein I think President Simon has done a GREAT deal to build up goodwill in that area. President Gast, I think, basically thought of athletics as “delegate and forget”, but Simon is an enthusiastic follower and supporter of all Lehigh teams, without losing focus on the bigger picture.
Which goes back to a night game. What a night game would do is add a one-time “special event” feel to the beginning of the year. I strongly feel that opening day is the most critical day on the calendar for establishing attendance the rest of the year, not just for students but for other fans, too. Freshmen who go to a football game on 8/31 and have a memorable, great time on that day are much more likely to go to more games during the year, and also more likely to go to games after graduation, too. Certainly my Freshman year experience of going to games is a huge factor in my own life – I spent a lot of time going to games today.