No more rockin' at 'The Rock'

An article appeared in the Indiana Daily Student Wednesday that discussed a new tailgating strategy the University will implement starting with Saturday's game versus Nicholls State. \nAssistant Athletics Director Kit Klingelhoffer said 10 minutes after kickoff, the IU Police Department will be walking outside Memorial Stadium to relay the following: If you are tailgating, you better have a ticket for the game. And if you have a ticket for the game, you better be inside the stadium. This goes for both the parking lot AND the grass lots. \nIn short -- the end of tailgating during IU football games as we know it. \nKlingelhoffer said the new policy will "curb unruly behavior" during football games. Instead, IUPD and the athletics department have taken a course of action that is counterproductive in appealing to the student body. And all of this is coming from an athletics department that should be grateful to the patronage of its students. Of course, this is the same athletics department that has accumulated a $5 million debt during the last half-decade. The same athletics department that has charged each student $30 on his or her tuition bill and dubbed it as an "athletics fee" despite a student-wide vote opposing the fee. The same athletics department that is still paying off the salaries of previous football coaches Cam Cameron and Gerry DiNardo and former Athletics Director Michael McNeely. Cameron was paid out $84,000 in 2004. DiNardo is set to make $1.06 million in the next two years. McNeely has been receiving a yearly sum of $839,460 since November 2002. \nFor an athletics department that has been piggy-banking its troubles on the student body for the last few years, they sure have one hell of a way to say "Thank you." \nBut that is not my point. This is: Tailgating during IU football games has never discouraged people from entering the stadium, Mr. Klingelhoffer. Having a losing record since 1995 is what has discouraged fans from coming to games. \nIn essence, IUPD will be pushing students and family members (without tickets) away from Memorial Stadium and an atmosphere that promotes cream and crimson camaraderie, and, yes, a little bit of drinking.\nHow have other Big Ten programs maintained such a high record of attendance at their football games? Do they push people from tailgating and place them in the stadium? No. Teams like Michigan and Ohio State fill their stadiums because they win. Period. \nWinning puts fans in the seats, not the butt of a baton held by an IU police officer. \nMy problem is not the athletics department trying to get more people to attend football games or even with the athletics department as a whole. My problem is that they are out of line trying to implement a policy for the students that is both unenforceable and ineffective. My problem is that the policy is unnecessary when ticket sales are up 23 percent overall from last year, and 47 percent for students. \nPeople will go to games. Forcing them will only create a backlash. \nIf there is one certainty in sports, collegiate or professional, it is that winning will solve everything. If we win, people will show up to the games.\nOh, people will come, Kit. People will most definitely come.