Good Indiana Crowd Helps Lead Hoosiers to Victory, but Good is the Enemy of Great

Written by: Nate Comp (@NathanComp1)

The college football fan attendance battle is not a new one to the sport. It is certainly not new to Indiana, who has often struggled to fill Memorial Stadium and certainly to keep fans in their seats for the entire game.

But Coach Cignetti is welcome to taking problems head on – look no further than his willingness and ability to quickly turn around this Hoosier football program – and this season he has made fan attendance a priority of his.

“So, there's a lot of things we're trying to change here,” said Cignetti after Indiana’s week one victory against FIU. “Another thing we're trying to change in tradition is we have got to keep the people in the seats after halftime. We need to create a power four environment in the stadium.”

There have been excuses – inferior opponents, hot weather – and finger pointing as to whether it is an alumni or student problem. Cignetti does not care either way. He wants fans in their seats for sixty minutes of game action.

He emailed the entire student body prior to this week’s matchup against Maryland urging them to contribute to the winning atmosphere.

“When the clock hits zero and we're 5-0, I want you to be there to celebrate a historic win with us,” he said. “The tailgates can wait. The parties can wait. If you need to study, that can wait too.”

And just like his postgame meetings with the media suggest with his 5-0 ballclub, he is somewhat satisfied with the results so far.

“You could feel the fans out there. I'm glad that they keep improving in the attendance area. I thought that was a good turnout, and good is the enemy of great, so let's have a great turnout. Let's sell it out next week or next time we're at home and figure out how to make it even louder because that's what we want to do; we want to be the best in everything we do.”

“Even when we're good, even when we perform good, we're not satisfied. But it was a good turnout.”

With the fifth win under the team’s belt, he’ll have a break from his role in generating fan attendance the next two weeks as the Hoosiers head to Northwestern before a bye week. But the emphasis will return the coming week when Nebraska comes to town, a homecoming matchup against a team whose fans are known to travel well.

“Players feed off of that energy. Look, it's all about energy, right? You've got to have energy to do anything, and the fans are supplying the energy, and the players are feeding off of that energy. I don't know how many points it's worth, but it's really important, and I think we got everything moving in the right direction here.”

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