Going to the Big House was an awesome experience and one I would recommend to anyone. The fans were friendly and gracious where we sat, in the tailgate area, and at the restaurants and bars before and after. Being at the Big House provided me some stark differences with what is Reser Stadium today. Remember this is a fan base that hasn't been pleased with the play and coaching the last few years and was surely stinging just a bit starting off with a lose this season to Utah.
Attendance. Displeased with the last two coaching regimes, losing record last year, missed bowls, loses to Ohio State ... the Utah lose and still an announced crowd of 109,651. We've talked a lot about attendance, true definition of fan, TV impact, losing. In Michigan they come and when people asked about population these day at least looking at Detroit and Portland City limits not that far apart. Second successful university competing for fans? Michigan State same day attendance was 76,526. In every way Detroit has more competing sporting venues and TV available than Portland/Oregon. Autzen could probably easily fill more seats if they made it bigger.
Standing. I was on the visitor side about 20 rows up on the 20 yard line. As far as I could tell no one all the way up 60 rows behind us sat during the game despite age or gender. In fact during a commercial a fan did loudly ask the people behind us to sit down, embarrassingly it was someone clad in Orange and Black. That's not to say as the game wore on people didn't sit during time-outs and half time. But whistle to whistle most everyone was standing from what I could see in my section and beyond for the whole game.
In synch. The cheers and songs were loudly sang, the pom pom's were used in unison, the crowd was electric. They understand their role and frankly seemed to be having a blast - one reason why you would come to the game instead of watching it on TV I guess.
Rock Music. your standard mix of ACDC & Metallica. Not Hip hop, no rap which we saw completely implode on us against Washington and USC by whipping their players into a frenzy with that frickin Chainsaw song a few years ago. At the Big house just good old rock and roll which everyone sang and jumped too. Virginia Tech's crowd went nuts to Metallica's "Enter Sandman," Wisconsin uses House of Pain's "Jump Around," end of the third quarter with literally every age fan jumping up and down ... while the players I've seen at the Big House and on TV seem to equally enjoy the rock music, it's intended to hype up the crowd. Hip Hop is not going to work for the wide age range. Let's settle on an opening rock song and a third quarter rock song and make it tradition like these school seem to have done.
Entrance. Of course Michigan has the banner jump deal and frankly watching it live was pretty cool. Others have mentioned we need to rework our entrance. Against Weber State we seemed to stumbled onto the field and I assume there wasn't an entrance music video. We use to have such awesome synchronized dramatic plays synched to cool "rock" music and fire works. we need to find that again.
Sticking around. With the Beavers well handled late in the fourth quarter I would say the majority of fans were still standing, cheering and sticking around. Not a "this one is handled lets get to our tailgater or get a jump on traffic" mind set. And as bad as traffic is in Corvallis, hours after the game it was still bad around their stadium. There to the end.
No stupid running around with cardboard rings around your waist. No silly videos with horses racing to Prineville or Jack in the box shell games. No video cam requesting to get your moves on. Just football.
Can't Get Back in if you leave at Halftime. We should have changed this long ago. 20 minutes is not enough time to squeeze in a quick tailgate session. The amount of people that stream out of Reser at halftime is significant and I would guess half don't ever make it back into the game. Time to ban leaving at halt time like other school do already.
Granted it's been hard to root for the Beavers play the last couple of years especially at home but coming to the games is largely to do with the tools created or used in the stadium to get us and keep us in the game but it also largely comes down to us the fans having fun. I'm sorry but that largely means standing, cheering, singing and staying.
Lastly I hope whomever is in charge of our game day stadium experience made it to the Big House because basically the formula just not that complicated and yet IMHO we've seem completely lost.
Attendance. Displeased with the last two coaching regimes, losing record last year, missed bowls, loses to Ohio State ... the Utah lose and still an announced crowd of 109,651. We've talked a lot about attendance, true definition of fan, TV impact, losing. In Michigan they come and when people asked about population these day at least looking at Detroit and Portland City limits not that far apart. Second successful university competing for fans? Michigan State same day attendance was 76,526. In every way Detroit has more competing sporting venues and TV available than Portland/Oregon. Autzen could probably easily fill more seats if they made it bigger.
Standing. I was on the visitor side about 20 rows up on the 20 yard line. As far as I could tell no one all the way up 60 rows behind us sat during the game despite age or gender. In fact during a commercial a fan did loudly ask the people behind us to sit down, embarrassingly it was someone clad in Orange and Black. That's not to say as the game wore on people didn't sit during time-outs and half time. But whistle to whistle most everyone was standing from what I could see in my section and beyond for the whole game.
In synch. The cheers and songs were loudly sang, the pom pom's were used in unison, the crowd was electric. They understand their role and frankly seemed to be having a blast - one reason why you would come to the game instead of watching it on TV I guess.
Rock Music. your standard mix of ACDC & Metallica. Not Hip hop, no rap which we saw completely implode on us against Washington and USC by whipping their players into a frenzy with that frickin Chainsaw song a few years ago. At the Big house just good old rock and roll which everyone sang and jumped too. Virginia Tech's crowd went nuts to Metallica's "Enter Sandman," Wisconsin uses House of Pain's "Jump Around," end of the third quarter with literally every age fan jumping up and down ... while the players I've seen at the Big House and on TV seem to equally enjoy the rock music, it's intended to hype up the crowd. Hip Hop is not going to work for the wide age range. Let's settle on an opening rock song and a third quarter rock song and make it tradition like these school seem to have done.
Entrance. Of course Michigan has the banner jump deal and frankly watching it live was pretty cool. Others have mentioned we need to rework our entrance. Against Weber State we seemed to stumbled onto the field and I assume there wasn't an entrance music video. We use to have such awesome synchronized dramatic plays synched to cool "rock" music and fire works. we need to find that again.
Sticking around. With the Beavers well handled late in the fourth quarter I would say the majority of fans were still standing, cheering and sticking around. Not a "this one is handled lets get to our tailgater or get a jump on traffic" mind set. And as bad as traffic is in Corvallis, hours after the game it was still bad around their stadium. There to the end.
No stupid running around with cardboard rings around your waist. No silly videos with horses racing to Prineville or Jack in the box shell games. No video cam requesting to get your moves on. Just football.
Can't Get Back in if you leave at Halftime. We should have changed this long ago. 20 minutes is not enough time to squeeze in a quick tailgate session. The amount of people that stream out of Reser at halftime is significant and I would guess half don't ever make it back into the game. Time to ban leaving at halt time like other school do already.
Granted it's been hard to root for the Beavers play the last couple of years especially at home but coming to the games is largely to do with the tools created or used in the stadium to get us and keep us in the game but it also largely comes down to us the fans having fun. I'm sorry but that largely means standing, cheering, singing and staying.
Lastly I hope whomever is in charge of our game day stadium experience made it to the Big House because basically the formula just not that complicated and yet IMHO we've seem completely lost.
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