Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

The economy has not only hit average, every day Joes, but it has also hit professional and college football. Around here, the ads are flying fast and furious to try to get people to buy Badger tickets. I think they will eventually sell, but for some of their shoddy home games, they might not get their normal sellouts.

Today I read this from ESPN. Indiana is moving one of their home games for next year to FedEx field in Washington DC. They get $3m, although they have to guarantee the sale of 71k tickets. They should be able to do that easily for one reason and one reason only. I will let the head coach of Indiana explain why.

But I went into this with the calculus that there's going to be a lot of Penn State people there and this may end up looking a lot a Penn State home game. I took that into account and won't be surprised or regret that we went with the game if it ends up having a big Penn State crowd. It will be a big-time atmosphere, and that will be pretty exciting. (bold and italics mine)

You don't say? That quote had me howling out loud. Really, this might look like a Penn State home game? Well color me surprised. OF COURSE it will look like a Penn State home game, because unlike the Indiana football program, which is a perennial doormat, PSU has a decent program, charismatic head coach and oh yeah, one more thing...FANS.

From this document, Penn State averaged 108,254 fans per game last season, and Indiana averaged a measly 31,782. That is brutal. Even Illinois averaged 61,707. Northwwestern averaged 28,590 but gets a pass since nobody at that school gives a damn about football. By the way, NW is a pretty good place to watch a football game if I don't say so myself.

Digression: Big Ten teams held the top three spots in attendance last year. It pleases me greatly that Michigan had the number 1 spot, and all of those fans got to watch their team get their asses handed to them over and over and over, especially by us. Easily the highlight of our mediocre 5-7 year.

So you can see, even when Indiana has a home game in their home town NOBODY shows up. I am going to put out a guess and say that the stands in DC will be filled with about 95% Nifty Lion fans. Another interesting point is that FedEx field has been derided as one of the very worst gameday experiences in all of football so have fun with that Hoosier and JoPa fans. When I am locked up in Chicago traffic or freezing in the peasant non PSL seats at Soldier Field, at least I can always say to myself "at least I'm not at FedEx".

But frankly, I wish Illinois would have done this when we were in the depths of the Ron Turner era. But Ron isn't that smart or creative. A good ca$h infusion is great for the program and keeps the board of regents off the football and AD staffs back. And you never know, maybe Indiana can snag a recruit out of DC that would be the equivalent of an SEC practice dummy.