in the student section because of the way the seats are filled. If one out of five seats is empty on the west side, it’s hard to tell because of how they’re scattered, and people will spread out in their parkas (or hunting jackets) to take up the unoccupied space. These kids might learn to stay at home from stay-at-home parents. Ever take a look at the middle deck on the south end zone? Where the hell are those people?

I went to the PSU-OSU game in 2001 when JoePa got 324 wins. There were at least 15,000 no-shows for that game. It was in the upper 30’s with flurries (late October), but there wasn’t so much snow that people couldn’t travel.

Student attendance has dropped off this year. Last year, it was fine. Why?

New ticket exchange system. If you decide last minute you can’t go to the game, you can’t just give your paper ticket to your friend – you have to hope they can sneak in with your ID (which may get confiscated). So anyone who decides after Thursday not to go to the game for any reason = empty seat. Why aren’t we going to the games THIS YEAR?

Crappy schedules and weather. We have control over the first. FIVE of our home games are not even games (non-conf. + Indiana) and happen at NOON. Hate on the students all you want, but the only reason I’m in the stadium at 11:30 and not still drunk from the night before, is the blue band. Most of us could have a lot more enjoyable wekend at a party on Friday and sleeping in Saturday morning. Really, what are you even missing when you don’t see the first quarter of us steamrolling Temple?

Minnesota for homecoming? If it weren’t homecoming and they weren’t coming off a strong year, I’d count that out too. That leaves Iowa and Ohio State as the only decent games that we can legitimately get excited about.

There are a ton of other situations where a student may not go to the game at the last minute too, in any year – maybe you went home for the weekend last minute, got sick, having more fun at the tailgate than they would in the game, got too drunk at the tailgate to make it in. In all of these situations, a paper ticket would allow students to pass their seat on to others.

Don’t give me the BS about scalping tickets. If you want your student tickets at the student price, wake up that morning and get them in the first ten minutes and you will be fine. If you didn’t get tickets and you want to pay $100 to see OSU, the only way you’re going to get that is in a free market. Price caps are just going to restrict supply. For every ticket sold LAST year for $100, there was a buyer that was made better off for it (remember ECON 002, the rational self-interest assumption?). TODAY, if you didn’t get tickets, you’re just SOL because no one’s going to sell OSU tickets at the capped price. You have buyers and sellers that would both love the $100 price that can’t be matched now.

There are two things that need to change to fix this problem:

Let us exchange tickets more flexibly so when ONE person can’t go, one of the other FIVE that want to, can.

Give us a reason to go and get excited. That comes from quality match-ups, not sound effects and “The Great Show.”

I doubt either of these changes will happen. This makes me wonder if the administration is truly ignorant of the problem or if they’re setting the student section up to fail to justify cutting back our territory and getting some more of that alumni $$$.

“The Greatest Show” hurts student participation. Before “the greatest show” came about football fans bought tickets. Now our football games aren’t just football games, they are giant raves, so students who are interested in being part of a giant rave, rather than the football team are now buying up tickets. But as we all know, there is usually only one or two games a year that have that rave atmosphere. couple that with the new student ticket policy and we have get empty seats.