I found this a very interesting response in the Phoenix. It's under the article 'Nick Knacks:Students Need to Start Showing Up For Loyola Games'

Courtney • 4 days ago
"Boohoo, the poor sleep deprived students can't spare a few /HOURS/ for us, the men's basketball team, at a 70/30 female-dominated school with lots of international and out of state students. Why can't they identify and sympathize with US and OUR problems? How heartless, they paid so much money to get an education here and won't stop studying/sleeping to support US instead of whatever major league sports teams they (probably) already support/watch in their free time. Oh, please lord, forgive them for they know not what they do!"

Whatever man, sell my student section seat to someone in the neighborhood who cares. I didn't come to Loyola to stroke your egos. Maybe bank on the alumni donors who are the only ones asking for the team that students didn't ask for their tuition to be spent on.

Or make games more fun for fans since they are deathly boring and there's not much to cheer for or nothing to do at all. Not engaging. What do you expect us to do? It's not like there is an opposing team's fans we need to compete with for volume. It's just us and we are too polite to randomly scream like psychos at everything.

No amount of begging or renaming things will change our reasons for not liking/enjoying the games themselves. Y'all are missing the point and can't complain. The more you complain, the less I want to go. You really don't care if we are having fun, you only care about yourselves. So there's no value to us to sit in a stadium like zombies or maniacs just to comfort you. Don't get things twisted, y'all aren't supporting the students/fans enough (not the other way around) and that's why we all wise up after freshman year or one game. It's just toxic.

Courtney misses some points in her response, but the underlying theme of disconnection is important to embrace.

Interesting. If a student doesn't want sports to be part of their college experience, I guess there isn't much you can do about that. Just hard to believe that out of 8,000 undergrads you can't find a couple hundred who want to go to games.

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Millennial females are the devil's spawn.

This is a problem we will always have to deal with. That's not to say we are the only school to have this problem, but I'd like to point out a couple of things.

Look at a school like Notre Dame. It has a few things going for it (outside of being in a major conference for basketball). It's "in the middle of nowhere." What competition is there for athletic events? Sure there are things on campus, but not much. Additionally, the culture starts from day one. As a freshman, you get on campus and your dorm has a culture to it. Many stay in the same dorm all 4 years because it's like family. These dorms compete against each other in all aspects of college life including intramural sports. Because of this, folks tend to not move off campus. And when it comes to sports, football season starts when they get to campus. So, as freshmen, they start to go to games to be with other dormmates or friends and then they realize "hey, this is pretty fun!" That drags to other sports as well (with basketball being the next biggest).

Loyola doesn't have that. People get on campus, start the year, make friends and come up with things to do. By the time basketball rolls around, they know where to go an what to do. They go off campus to experience the big city. They do other things. There just isn't a draw.

I tried to explains this to the athletic department and to Steve. You have to get them from day 1. Create a culture where your dorm is kind of a big deal. Create a culture of competition. Make them go to games to win something or earn something. Then, when you've got them in, maybe they realize it's not just about stuff...it's actually fun.

It's nice and all that the coach goes around to the dorms and around campus now to get people to the games. But they've already lost interest. They don't care now. This all has to start in August (and, to be frank, significantly earlier).

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Cigarboy sucks!

Good post. I have the impression that soccer attendance was up this year, so maybe something is brewing?

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Wow....how disheartening was that to read!.. I think it brings home a couple points 1. College athletics are getting disconnected from the college community 2. The fight will always be to form a sense of community so that the act of going to a game is about supporting that community...3. If students see athletics as taking from their college experience and costing them money , which may be true it would be rough to go and support them 4. I fear this is the result of the SATISFY ME culture created by the ability to satisfy your needs immediately and shape your world in to your own fine tuned world. 4. For me as a fan back in the day and even today when I attend I feel like I am part of helping the team win,,,hence part of the team and community that is Loyola. It is obvious from this article that her question is WHAT IS IN IT FOR ME ? and I think they have no way to understand that it is being part of something OUTSIDE YOURSELF....A cheering crowd provides support and adrenaline and helps the team.....but if you are sitting in the stands waiting for someone to entertain you instead of focused on helping the team and Loyola community succeed..I guess it would seem not worth your time....I mean you could go back to your dorm and play Fast and Furious and run over a bunch of people....oh you are soooo powerful.....5. It is also Habit and as we have mentioned many times before we are fighting 30 years of lack of attention. 6. Having said that...the experience should probably be as fun as possible...good contests,,,music....etc......7. I still like giving away a 6th player scholarship to one fan who makes all the games.....8. WINNING cures all ills.
Lastly,like it or not, I think you have to acknowledge where this persons perspective is coming from as you continue to try and get students back to the games....

Once showing up at games is "the thing to do," then it will be the thing to do. It hasn't been for a long time. I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of students who find that if it becomes too popular, it's something to avoid. It's hard to manufacture a social phenomenon, and even harder to have it be EXACTLY as appealing as it needs to be, in the exact ways you think it should happen.

I remember going to games at the Rosemont Horizon in November/early December in the early 90s, when school was in session, against good competition (Wisconsin, Illinois State, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Bradley). There were usually less than a busload of students if you don't count the band, and it was hard to tell if student-age fans were rooting for us or the competition. So it's much, much better now in terms of student attendance.

The problem is non-student (ordinary fan, neighborhood adult, alumni, and season ticket) attendance. There was obviously a lot of student involvement with the basketball team in the 60s, 70s, and through the middle of the 80s. I think moving out to the Horizon really put too much distance between the students and the event. Public transportation to Rosemont in the 80s was pretty inconvenient. It was harder for people in the city to get there. And now, it's the alumni from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, and people from that age group who should be the main bulk of the non-student attendance. There was a lost generation in there from the 80s through the late 90s, when the games were way off campus, the teams were bad, it took an hour and 20 minutes to get to the games on public transportation, and promotion to the students was pretty bad for at least a decade and a half that I was aware of.

All we need is 500 students who might go to a game or two, 300 or so students willing to attend on a semi-regular basis, and 200-250 hard core students who rarely miss a game. Voila... that's an average of about 400-500 students who make a lot of noise.

As a current student, while I agree there is a disconnect and I am in the minority of die hard fans, I will say there is a lot more buzz around campus with the basketball team this year. I think they've done a good job with the freshmen and I think in general attendance will be up, although it hurts no "big name" teams are coming to Rogers Park this year. People are starting to understand we are good now

I never sympathized with sleep/schoolwork being an excuse. When all is said and done it comes down to work ethic and time management. I double majored and triple minored. My least busy year was my senior year when I worked 15 hours a week in Evanston, was involved in 2 choirs, held a leadership position in 3 clubs, took 17-19 credit hours over the 2 campuses, and was in another 2 clubs. I still never missed a basketball (men’s and women’s) or men’s volleyball game and got 8 hours of sleep at night. All I did was start homework and papers early, did them between classes and on commutes, and occasionally brought a book to the game to get stuff done during half time. Most people who I heard complain about staying up all night and having so much to do wasted their afternoons and weekends and let things pile up.

With that mini-rant over, I think part of the game entertainment problem is this attitude of showing up, sitting on your hands, and expecting the engagement to come to you. My mother always told me “you get what you put in.” Some of my favorite games were the ones where I was acting like a “psycho” with my friends. I didn’t need a Corrupt Illinois Politician Race (still like this idea) to be entertained. I told people, if they thought it was disappointing to talk to the Athletic Department about it. I’ve found them to be pretty open to suggestions. I don’t think anyone ever did. I doubt it happens, but I wish Courtney would talk to someone about it. Maybe she’d lead to some change and get a little more out of the games.