I spent the better half of the Iowa game brooding on this very subject. I feel that this is at the heart of all that is wrong with this city's sports culture.
First off, this next season will be my tenth as a ticketholder including my stint in the student section. I saw the highs and lows of the Mason era and the start of the current program. I can hear the derisson coming in response to my following observations and let me say this: I, dear Gopherholers, am no troll. Despite my inability to spend the time to post 400 times in the last month, I live and die by this football program.
Certainly let me say that the rise of the internet ticket broker has made it very hard to keep Iowa or Wisconsin fans out of our games, as long as they remain more ardently supportive of their programs than the average Minnesotan is of just about anything. Tickets were very available to the most recent Iowa game, Iowa travels well. With the legalization of ticket scalping in this state this is only going to get more prevelent pending a seachange of public attitude in our own fanbase. We tried the method of pairing these rival tickets to another game in the past and it hasn't worked. Most famously when linked to the NDSU game, Iowa's fanbase happily set a steady trade with the NDSU fanbase and many tickets were being swapped so that it actually had a multiplier effect on non gophers attending those games. Two Bison ticket holders would trade their tickets to Hawkeyes and there would now be four Iowans and four NoDaks at the respective games.
As toward half the crowd not being members of the opposing fanbase I assure you this last game was one of them. Not having the stomach to pay to close attention to the game in the second half I endevoured to come up with a somewhat scientific estimate using crowd counting techniques learned at our beloved U. After a painful half hour's task I am certain there was nearly 60% Hawkeyes last Saturday. The upper deck of the dome has more seats than downstairs and there was an overwhelming majority of Iowa fans upstairs. The lower bowl had a majority of Gophers but not by that great of a margin. There was still at least 20% Hawkeyes downstairs. Admittedly this was the worst of the 70 odd games I've been to it terms of just about everything, including our fans attendance, but to say it cannot happen at the new stadium is premature.
I think there are less student turncoats than there used to be, but there is still a staggering amount of students who are gopher fans every Saturday except for when their childhood football heroes come riding in from their home state. This is probably the most disgusting aspect of being a gopher fan for me. I am a borderstate transplant but I am entirely devoted to the sports of my Alma Mater and was appalled when I would look around the student section on Wisconsin Saturdays. It was the start of the decade the student section comprised of about a third of what it is now if not less, but there was easily a quarter of the fans in the 2001 that was wearing red. The badgers were much less removed from their rosebowl teams in time, and reciprocity was and is still a major element to our student population swelling its ranks with students unable to let go of their favorite teams back home. My experience in 01 with the girl who had sat next to me all season was indicative of the disease (this being before the current general seating system in the student section we were assigned seats) I will never forget how she looked at me when asked wtf!? when she arrived in red with four scarlet clad friends. She bubbled "I loved the badgers in highschool and all my friends came up too!" I think I puked in my mouth. This looks bad to everybody outside this program. This is awful to recruits and their families in comparison to other schools students.
As toward the "grown up" season ticketholders they are scarcely less sporadic in their fandom.
What disturbed me at the Iowa game particularly was the large number of Iowa fans who had obviously bought tickets held by our season ticketholders. The lower bowl had seats littered with scattered groups of black jerseys and sweatshirts where there was maroon and gold all year. I know that the Michigan game was disappointing but the number of fans who bailed is sickening. The couple that has sat next to my group for several years are also no better as they too pawned off their seats to friends. And these are people who can remember gopher national championships. Forget about the fans raised as vikings fans. Or children of the Wacker era. They are some of the most fair weather fans in all of sports. Half the gopher fan base shows up late, and leaves early and given the slightest reason they bail on the whole season. The new stadium will keep these people interested for a while but I don't think it is a cure-all for this place. They will always be willing to sell off their tickets if the team is down, it is part of the culture of this city. I know many have alleged that it is the saturated sports market of the state, but I think it is lame given how many alums stay in this state. The fact that we graduate enough students in couple years to fill the dome, but can't find 45,000 fans out of the hundreds of thousands of alumni that live in a easy drive is absolutely ridiculous.
Don't blame harelygopher for noting our horrible attendance. Get mad at bastards who come late, leave early, don't cheer, and are more than willing to sell their ticket on ebay for a quick 70 bucks, because they are and will be the problem for a long fricking time. Or call me a troll and pretend it doesn't exist.
