(02-05-2019 11:27 AM)Wolfman Wrote: NASCAR is experiencing different issues. 1 - t-shirt fans flocked to the sport, inflating prices and forcing true fans out. The t-shirt fans are now moving on to what ever fad is next. True fans will be back when the prices adjust. 2 - NASCAR is losing its most popular drivers. Dale Jr., who seemed like he hardly ever won a race, was one of the most popular ever and is now retired.
As others have noted, college has its own issues - games too long, ticket prices, parking prices, concession prices, required donations, TV, traffic, etc.
And actual game experience stinks. My wife and I held our season tickets for over 4 decades. Whether Auburn won or lost had a great season or a lousy one we were there. We sat with the same folks for over those 40 years with minor changes. Their kids were like our kids, and then their grandkids were like ours. When IMG took over the game day experience the constant blaring of the new mega stadium speakers made it impossible to socialize with our friends of four decades at the stadium. The couple who had sat next to us for those four decades had to cup their hands and shout into our ears to be heard. We couldn't even have the hour before kickoff to socialize because the damned piped in noise started as soon as the gates were open.
I could cheerfully have choked the ever loving life out of the stupid S.O.B. who decided that piped in noise added to the television excitement!
What all these corporate add people forgot was that the game event is a social occasion as much as it is a game. I'm totally cool with the legitimate noise of the game. But now you can't even talk in between plays and timeouts because as soon as the action on the field stops the speakers start blaring pieces of the same noise all over again.
We still support the school, but seldom do anything now except give the tickets away. We see our friends in our home where the food is better, the noise level of the game doesn't drown out our conversation, and where nobody has peed on the bathroom facilities.
You know it's the little things that make you feel ripped off. When they passed a rule against stadium cushions in order to force all the fans to pay $5 bucks for the stadium rental of one, I felt more ripped off over that than I did over the donation to the Athletic Fund for the right to buy tickets, or the $85 dollar tickets. If $2,500 a year for the donation and tickets isn't enough for a bunch of jerks who were making my game day experience miserable with their idiotic schemes then maybe they don't really want loyal fans if they have to stick us again for a $5 dollar cushion every game.
But to top it all off in the rude department, one of our friends lost her Mom. Some jerk from the Athletic Department called her the day of her mother's funeral to tell her if she wanted her mother's tickets (she had been faculty) that their family would have to increase their donation level. She told them where they could stick their tickets, and the one's she had faithfully bought for decades.
My point being this:
Alumni feel a close bond to their school which has nothing to do with wins and losses. They resent being fleeced when their donations, years of buying tickets, and faithful attendance indicate their loyalty and imply a deeper relationship to the school than that of a consumer buying a product.
People my age resent the hell out of having to wait 45 minutes to an hour in a phone queue to speak to a person from AT&T when we have a problem. We resent state and federal governments that want our tax money by April 15th but whose sorry butts can't get us the tax forms before mid March. We resent having a feckless FCC that permits our very elderly parents to get fleeced by overseas phone scammers when in our lifetimes the FCC once tracked down bunco schemes and arrested them and when our phone companies could simply block overseas calls linked to scammers if their affiliate overseas wasn't raking in some revenue from the phone banks being used to scam.
Our Federal Government once looked out for the people and Congressmen would return a reply to a call or letter.
Corporations have inserted their noses, along with their lack of personal contact and their lack of accountability, into every aspect of our lives and have corrupted our state and federal government in the process. There is no customer relations being practiced anywhere that I can tell.
Attendance is down at college events, and NASCAR, and the NFL, and elsewhere because one crappy corporately run experience is the same as the next. It's all as phony as Epcot is at Disney World. And now it has invaded our college venues and people whose voices can't be heard by the corporate entities sponsoring the mess, and can't be heard over their noise, vote with their feet. And when we are good and pissed off we'll start voting with our wallets and then and only then will those greedy bastards start listening. And apparently it has begun!