How to ‘Pack the Rock’ for Homecoming

I have no qualifications as an athletic director – I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night – but I think I could do a better job than our current administration. Just give me one day as athletic director ... with a pro-rated salary.\nRight after I rename Assembly Hall after a certain exiled general and bring the traditional Midnight Madness back, the main focus of my 24-hour power trip would be IU football’s woeful attendance rates.\nThrough four home games this season, the Hoosiers are averaging a miniscule attendance of 33,157, a staggering 94-person increase from last year. Out of 119 Football Bowl Subdivision schools last season, the Hoosiers finished a middling 69th in home attendance. Kirkwood on a Tuesday night has been outdrawing Memorial Stadium this fall. Despite having one of the smallest stadiums in the Big Ten, the Hoosiers are light years away from reaching their stadium’s capacity of 52,180. Last season, the average IU home attendance wasn’t even half the Big Ten average of 69,643. The only school with a more dismal home attendance was Northwestern.\nSo what can the Hoosiers do to outdraw the likes of East Carolina, Air Force and Fresno State (three of the 68 teams with better home attendance rates than IU)?\nThe Hoosiers have the perfect opportunity this weekend to “Pack the Rock.” They are playing Penn State on Homecoming weekend, and on top of that, ESPN is nationally televising the game. This is IU’s chance to show the world it cares about football. I don’t care if the fans have to drag homeless people from the Monroe County Public Library, just fill the seats.\nIf I were Rick Greenspan for a day, I’d recruit IU’s freshman class like it just verbally committed to Illinois. That’s 7,208 potential IU fans who have never heard of Gerry DiNardo. At the very least, it is 7,208 potential alumni donors – Aha! I got someone’s attention. \nEarlier this season, the athletic department began its recruitment of freshman, giving them free tickets to the Indiana State game. But that’s like giving someone a free sample of a stale pretzel. Instead of having the Memorial Stadium bleachers as naked as the girl from “High School Musical,” why not admit every freshman for free again? Think of it as a long-term investment.\nIf I were Greenspan for a day, I’d also mandate $13 game-day tickets for the rest of the season, in honor of Terry Hoeppner’s goal to “Play 13.” This way, IU would still be earning some revenue, while not suffering the embarrassment of a half-empty stadium. Here’s the advertising slogan: “Pay 13.”\nI would also organize a “Crimson-out” for the game. The athletic department has a little more push than a Facebook group delivering the same message. The school was able to raise enough money to build a North End Zone Facility; can’t it find a couple of sponsors to back 50,000 crimson shirts with “Don’t Quit” on the back? \nSomething also has to be done about the in-game “entertainment.” When did John Mellencamp’s over-played music replace the school song? Also, I don’t know how last year’s home basketball games didn’t get this point across, but IU male cheerleaders have the same effect on a crowd as tear gas and rubber bullets. Apparently Roseanne Barr’s rendition of our national anthem opened doors for undeserving people everywhere to be given microphones.\nThe cheerleaders are not at the root of IU’s attendance problems, they’re just easy targets. The athletic department will have to adapt and tweak some of its policies in order to purge Memorial Stadium of substandard turnouts. \nIf not, the Hoosiers will continue to play in front of 30,000 strong. I don’t have a degree in sports management, nor have I ever played someone who had one on television, but I would imagine that would be a pretty disappointing figure for an athletic director.