From Buying Seats to Tailgating to Cheesy Promotions, The IU Game Day Experiences of an IU Fan is Greatly Lacking
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Fans aren’t flocking to Memorial Stadium, ticket prices and game day experience are biggest complaints. Image: Sammy Jacobs Hoosier Huddle
Written By Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)
College Football Saturdays are supposed to be sacred. I have been attending Indiana football games since 2003 (the Bucket Game was my first ever IUFB experience). Growing up in New York, I was not born a Hoosier fan. Instead, I chose this university when Gerry Dinardo became head coach in 2002. Not only is Coach Dinardo a friend, many of my high school teammates came out to Bloomington to extend their football careers. My dad and I also attended his final game in West Lafayette in 2004 just months after I had been accepted to the University. Every year since then (outside of 2013), my mom (my dad passed away in 2005 and our last IU game together was IU’s final win over Kentucky) has come out for a game.
Saturday was her annual trip out to Indiana and we had great seats and perfect weather. We stopped by our favorite tailgate before heading into the game. So, I wanted to tell Hoosier Nation about my game day experience on Saturday as I sat in my $70 seats.
Taking the product on the field out of the equation, because even if you had the best game day experience on Earth it would have been awful, the experience of going to an Indiana football game is tedious if not boring. Let’s start with the logical beginning point of planning any outing, tickets.
Tickets are Severely Over Priced
I knew that my mother was coming out for this game months in advance and had started to look at tickets way back in August. I checked the ticket office website and some of the secondary market sites such as StubHub. Through IU, to get two decent seats it would have cost me $150, 70 bucks a ticket plus a $10 service charge. I thought to myself ‘this is outrageous, who can afford to go to an Indiana football game and why is the university charging so much when the stadium is 1/3 full?’ I ended up buying fantastic seats on StubHub, sixth row 50-yard line, for four dollars more than it would have cost to sit last row in the end zone through IU.
Image: PurdueSports.com
The powers that be that set ticket prices don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing. Let’s compare IU to what Purdue is doing with their football tickets. While heading over to the Purdue Athletics website to look at prices, the first thing that pops up is an ad saying ‘Flash Sale Get Both Games for $50 (Iowa 11/3, Wisconsin 11/10). That’s a great deal. $100 gets you two seats to two of the biggest games of the year for Purdue. Purdue’s single game tickets are also based on tier pricing. Purdue actually will charge $55 more than Indiana for their most expensive seat, between the 40-yard lines against Ohio State. However, an adult can get into that game in the ‘Value End Zone’ seats for $55. As you can see from the graphic above the average Purdue game is just more affordable than the average IU game. IU charged all adults, not young alumni, $50 a piece, for their matchup against Ball State, Purdue charged AT MOST $45 against their opponent from the MAC (Eastern Michigan). That is how you do tiered pricing. It may take a little effort and some creativity, but it should not be difficult for a Big Ten ticket office to do.
There’s a lot of missing revenue in Memorial Stadium because someone thought charging $70 for a Big Ten game was the best idea. But let’s move on to the next step in a football Saturday. Parking and tailgating!
IU is Losing the Tailgate
Lot 10 sits empty three hours before kickoff of Indiana’s game against Michigan State Image: Brian Tonsoni
Maybe it is by design or maybe it was unintentional, but the tailgating at Indiana football games has taken a major step backwards. Indiana students and alumni pride themselves on believing that the Hoosier fans have a great tailgating atmosphere. You see shirts saying ‘We’ve Never Lost a Tailgate’ or ‘It’s Tailgate Season’ all over the place. Well I am here to give fans a dose of reality. Indiana tailgating is mediocre at best and is in danger of being really bad. Could tailgating around Memorial Stadium be great? Absolutely, and it used to be pretty darn good.
Tailgating efforts have been squashed by the University, it started by limiting the student tailgate hours and now has continued with the introduction of the VIP tailgate area run by Blockparty Premium Tailgates. For a minimum of $600 you get a 10’x10’ lightweight tent, six chairs, a cooler with ice, a table, bellhop service and a personalized sign. Those are sold out and the next package is a cool grand and tops out at $2,000 if you are entertaining up to 40 people and want a TV so fans can watch other games while the Hoosiers kickoff in Memorial Stadium. Oh, did I mention that this area has overtaken one of the most popular tailgate areas in Bloomington, the fields across 17th street? I have yet to be over there to check it out, but fans have reached out in anger saying that this area is empty most game days.
The new parking ops set up is not good either. Brian Tonsoni, an IU graduate and avid football fan, has had his set up in Lot 10/11 for over 20 years and has noticed the difference in atmosphere or lack thereof.
“There is a prime tailgate area in Lot 11 that is currently only being used by the last to arrive of the pre-paid passes.” Tonsoni said in a message to Hoosier Huddle, “this limits tailgating atmosphere. This decision seems to be made by the parking lot attendants for simplicity of their job. In past years this space was first to fill and full of spirit. This combined with the premium spots that took space in the Grass lots to the South has really seemed to quiet the pregame activities in two areas of the common fan.”
The church lot across SR45/46 is packed with fans who want to be closer to the stadium. Image: Brian Tonsoni
Meanwhile, the church across 45/46 is making out like bandits and has become a lively tailgate area for fans who arrive early, but did not purchase parking in advance. The fix for this is pretty simple. The logic for selling parking passes makes sense, people like to plan and selling them for cheaper, earlier guarantees that they’re sold. However, it would help if IU had a surface parking area open for day of game purchase for fans who may have waited until the last minute to get head to Bloomington, want to get there early and tailgate. Lots should open every game at 7am, if it’s an 8 pm game you can open just one or two that early, but don’t be scared to let IU fans have fun.
So now that the game day atmosphere that makes college football special has been pushed out of the lots close to Memorial Stadium, let’s take a step inside the limestone walls of the newly renovated home of the Hoosiers.
Pre-Game Traditions Lacking Oomph
Many schools have pregame traditions that bring back memories for alumni and create new ones for young fans who may be attending their first Hoosier football game. There’s script Ohio, Howard’s Rock at Clemson, the touching of the ‘Go Blue’ banner at Michigan. The list goes on and on, but while Indiana isn’t steeped in tradition like those schools, they are not helping themselves out either.
The pregame routine has been largely the same for the past 15 years and probably longer than that, but my first home game was in 2003. The marching ‘Indiana’ is nice and the fight song is good, but there is nothing to get the crowd fired up in any way, shape or form. Recently Indiana has added ‘Back Home Again in Indiana’ to it’s pregame routine as a homage to the Indianapolis 500. It’s great there, I get it. It could be great at IU as well, it was when OSU was in town and the students amped it up, but the lapse in judgement comes when the band plays that and the Alma Mater back-to-back. It’s sleep inducing and the solution is simple. Pick one for pregame and one after the game. Sing the Alma Mater win or lose after the game, it’s a tradition at other places.
Indiana has to also do away with playing their warm-up music on speakers sitting in the north end zone. It’s a bad set up, looks second rate and sounds worse. IU just put in a new scoreboard, you’d like to think that sound system can be used for pregame music (also it may spread that music to the parking lots).
As for the team entrance on to the field, it goes largely unnoticed by me most Saturdays (on Saturday IU had a moving tribute to George Taliaferro and it was great), the “pump-up” video is not eye-catching and the flames and smoke are passé. It’s time for some new blood in that department or just bring back the bison. That was cool at least. The crowd should be at a fever pitch when the team runs out, not standing there wondering what just happened. Which brings us to the final segment of our trip through the Hoosier Game Day, in-game entertainment.
Memorial Stadium Just Feels like Amateur Hour
The biggest complaint outside of the team’s performance, which is largely uncontrollable, is the level of in-game entertainment maybe matches that of an Independent League baseball game (no their seats aren’t $70). Since Fred Glass took over the department in 2008, the Hoosier faithful have seen things like the quarry crane, tuba race and Wii Home Run Derby come and go. Nothing stuck and for good reason, the ideas stunk.
Fans are annoyed with the punt “catching” promotion, the gimmicky ‘Simba Cam’ and the embarrassing ‘Oblivious Cam’ which points out fans who are not paying attention.
The thing is, most of these flaws are easily fixable. People want to hear the band more during time outs, they want to see highlights of Hoosier legends and get updates from around the conference and nation. Most want to enjoy a beer in the stadium to go along with their $70 seat. They don’t care, want or need any of these gimmicks that IU throws at them. IF the Indiana Athletic Department is so desperate for advertising money, there are other ways to do it. Sell the rights to the stadium, put up field goal nets sponsored by AllState or something.
Right now, going to an Indiana football game is too expensive, not unique enough and just not entertaining enough for the casual fan and the product on the field Saturday didn’t help matters.
I enjoy covering and following Indiana football and have met some really awesome people along the way. People who truly care about the program. Right now, Indiana is letting them down, pricing them out and making it difficult to fill seats. Indiana football has potential and there is no reason that Bloomington can’t be a special place to take in a football game. The stadium is redone, there is plenty of space for tailgating and the scenery of rolling hills and a classic campus are second to none, but the powers that be have to make the experience worth the effort some fans put in.