Observations at La Tech
To start, this isn't a salt post at all. These were observations I made about La Tech that are completely separate from the football game and these were things I noticed long before the game even started.
So, I got to campus in Ruston about 30 minutes before the game because I'm not a huge tailgater and had to meet my dad to ride together halfway there. When we arrived, the entire campus felt dead. I saw our Eagle Club tailgate, which at that point only had about 100 people hanging around, and there were Tech fans walking toward the game, but I saw no tailgating, no games, no nothing. It was so quiet for a gameday.
We got a free park pretty darn close to the stadium at a dorm parking lot. After walking for about five minutes, we found ourselves on a track with a practice football field right next to it. Completely empty. Now there may be regulations and rules that they have to follow, but this felt like a massively missed opportunity by Tech to have tailgaters here, a band playing like we have on Centennial Lawn, inflatables and games for kids. This is right next to the stadium and seems like a great place to let fans hang out and party. You could say they don't want anyone on it, but they sure didn't seem to have a problem with people walking across it to get to the stadium.
When we bought our tickets, the entire visitor side was General Admission. Now, I fully recognize that most teams La Tech plays aren't bringing many visiting fans, but to me, having an entire side of your stadium be GA severely devalues your product. It's basically saying "No one's gonna be here, so pick wherever you want!"
Concessions were meh and had incredibly long lines. Nothing new at most events if we're honest.
When we picked some seats in the USM section, I noticed that the tailgating apparently happened in a parking lot to my right. I'm sure it's tradition for the fans, but being so restricted on where they tailgate impacted the life of everything else on campus. Fans trickled in and by the time it peaked, I'd guess 15k were in the stadium. The home side looked half empty and I know the visitor side was pretty empty, outside of the student section that was pretty spread out. I DO NOT like putting the visitors directly next to the students. Again, I recognize they probably don't get many visitors, but when you have to deal with students cussing out our section every time they walk up the steps, it gets old, especially with little kids around.
The video board, I suppose due to the sunlight, was dim and you could barely see anything on it until the clouds came out in the 3rd. I'm not sure how old their board is, but I don't recall ever dealing with that issue at USM. Whoever runs their sound needs to be taught how it works, because their sound control was dreadful. I'm not sure if it was intentionally malicious or just plain negligent, but multiple times they'd play incredibly loud music long past the snap of the ball, or they'd have the music off, we'd snap it for a field goal, and they'd blare something out trying to mess our team up. Felt like a petty attempt to get an advantage of some sort.
To continue on sound, so many times in the game, the place felt like a library. Pregame, they didn't seem to have much music playing at all. Just a bunch of advertisements over the intercom. They'd sometimes play a song, realize they weren't supposed to play it yet, cut if off, then when it was time, turn it back on again, but they didn't restart the song, so you had these really strange intro points of songs that made you cringe.
One last thing, though I know I thought of many more while I was at the game, their band couldn't even stay in straight lines. It felt like such an afterthought, like they have a band because they have to, not because they care about it. Formations were weak, I barely heard them play (and I did listen for it), and at one point during the second quarter, I went down to get a snack and saw some of them texting on their phones to get out of the heat. This is while the game is going on and their team has the ball. Like, don't you have a job you're supposed to be doing? Just a lack of care.
All of this to say, if you visit this forum enough, you know I'm pretty critical of Southern Miss Athletics. Our leadership, our incompetence, our complacency, our laziness, everything. I could write a novel on it probably. But when I went to La Tech Saturday, a quote from my mom came to my head. You see, my mom loves to go to the beach. She doesn't have the 'beach body' like some ladies do, in fact, she's always saying she wants to diet but never finds the time. But she loves going to the beach because, to quote her, "The beach is where I can go and feel better about myself, because all I have to do is look around and I'll see people that look a lot worse than me."
We're far from perfect, and we have SO MANY areas we could improve upon, but going to La Tech was like going to the beach. When I'm there, at least I can feel a lot less bad about Southern Miss.
(This post was last modified: 10-21-2019 11:53 AM by EagNBran.)
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