Oct. 25, 2000
(Steve White, who served as WCU's Sports Information Director during four decades and was officially recognized as Catamount Athletics Historian upon his retirement in 1998, will author this weekly Internet column. White can be reached at S.White28@gte.net with your comments and suggestions or to answer questions about WCU's athletics history)
What Has Happened To Traditions And Students?
| What's Up With Whitey Archive |
|
|
I've got some food for thought this week for CatamountCrawler.Com chatters.
I click-on the crawler daily to check the mood of Catamount fans and have been reading with interest the comments of lack of enthusiasm from the Catamount Club and student section and some ideas for turning that around.
I've spent the last 30 plus years in stadium press boxes where the Cats have played. Memorial Stadium in the NAIA and Division II days and Whitmire Stadium when we moved up the prestige ladder and on the road at venues from A to Z, make that Appalachian State to Wofford as we have never played a Z school, therefore, I do not profess to be an authority on fan enthusiasm. However, working from the tops of stadiums has given me the opportunity to see and hear fans from a different perspective.
From the emptiness and silence of Tennessee Tech's Tucker Stadium to the raucous 85,000 in LSU's Tiger Stadium, two things combined to impress me - tradition and students. The last time we played at Tennessee Tech, I personally counted 218 students in that designated section and I thought I was watching an ESPN game with the mute button on. That's less than 3% of Tech's undergraduate enrollment of 8,500. In sharp contrast, 66% (20,000) of LSU's 30,000 students were in Death Valley back on Labor Day weekend when most college students in America go home and the noise at times made my ear drums rattle. By the way, LSU was coming off a 3-8 season which was preceded by a 4-7 season. I think it is safe to assume that football is more important to LSU's students than TTU's.
What I am getting to is that the non-student fans, in our case Catamount Club members, parents, season ticket holders, feed off student enthusiasm. It's like a riot..somebody throws the first rock and all hell breaks loose.
Last Saturday in Whitmire Stadium (Homecoming Day 2000 in Cullowhee for those not there), I witnessed a very exciting football game with a fan-friendly first half in which the Catamounts' offense was as close to unstoppable as I've seen in a very long time. There was a decent student gathering - notice I did not say "crowd" - of maybe 1,500 and that includes the marching band. That's about 25% of WCU's total enrollment. The Cats led at halftime, 38-21, and I said to myself "Self, a lot of those students I see tailgating in the parking lot, full of spirit(s) will come into the stadium for the second half and enjoy this great game." Silly me. At least half of that 1,500 were gone when Josh Jones successfully on-sided the second half kickoff. It was not raining. It was not cold. It was a great day for football with the chances of a Catamount win well on the plus side. Outside of the marching band, there were only small pockets of enthusiasm. The rest of the stadium, except for the Chattanooga fans who had visions of a comeback win, took their cue from the WCU student sections and treated it like a TV game.
There were more fans in little Memorial Stadium for our 1968 homecoming game when the Cats were 2-2, coming off 4-5-1 and 5-5 seasons than were in Whitmire Stadium last Saturday.
WCU's lack of student, and general fan, enthusiasm in this and over the past five or so seasons is not unique on our level of football. Georgia Southern's athletics administration was trying everything legal to get half or a third of its 14,000 students to Paulson Stadium a few years ago. Last year in Chattanooga when the Cats visited, there might have been 2,000 fans in their 20,000 seat stadium. East Tennessee State's attendance is abysmal for a school with an enrollment of 12,000 and a city population of at least 50,000.
What has happened to the bond between college football and college students? What happened to the cheering and attendance competition between the frats at the games? What are college students doing in lieu of attending football games? Are they playing games on the Internet or watching videos on a beautiful October afternoon when they have a chance to imbibe and live up to the image of a college student?
If you have a thought.or thoughts on this social issue, offer them on CatamountCrawler.Com. Maybe your idea(s) can be used and patented for college athletics administrators.
P.S. The App State Game countdown has begun.
|
|
 |
