I believe everyone will agree that the number of season tickets (which is the back bone of attendance) has declined greatly in the last couple of years. Which happened before the incident after the opening game. What do you think is the single greatest reason for this decline ? I'm guessing you will say it's because of the product on the field. If you believe this, I would encourage to go back and read numerous threads here where many season ticket holders stated why they were not renewing.
The reason for ticket decline could be numerous, but part of it is winning and losing. Part of it is whether people feel connected to the team. Do they have a relationship with it. Are they more likely to have a good relationship if they hear more positive coming from the team than negative?
Right now the football team is viewed by many as a group of guys playing ball who get free rides and who are there to play football, have women chase them, and that's about it.
If you change the culture where they are positive figures in the community, where every day there is an article about them doing good things, that would help outweigh the one or two bad things that pop up which then makes them lose all the positive credibility they've gained with the community.
This is the definition of culture change. They need to change the culture where socially they are viewed as an essential contributor to the community, whether it's volunteering, visiting kids in the hospital, recognizing community members, etc., these are things they need to do, because in MN it is different than Alabama or Texas or LSU. It's not just about football here. You need to be more than just football. In the south that's good enough, but the Minnesota consumer has far more choices so it's easy to cut bait when the University Football program is embarrassing itself.
For all I know, the Gophers could be doing all of this already, but if so they need someone better and publicizing it. As much as i hate the term "marketing" that's essentially what the teams biggest need is at this point.
If their grade point average is above University average, that should be publicized. But a newspaper isn't just going to write about that, so they need to take the next step and do something unusual like create a Football Tutoring Program where the football players are actually tutoring the other students. It would be a complete 180 on what people's perceptions are.
Also, we neighbor Wisconsin. We should have Goldy and the football team visiting Wisconsin hospitals all the way to Marshfield Clinic. These kids are going to grow up and move to Minneapolis or Chicago for jobs in 10-20 years. Might as well start making connections to these families early on.
There's a lot they can do and that's why when PJ says, we're going to get people who don't even like football to be fans, that's the angle I think he's coming at.
