Coach's Corner
By Andy "Coach" Cotton, Fri., Jan. 31, 1997
In bringing up this touchy subject, Penders evokes the proverbial turd in the punchbowl. Everyone knows it's there, but no one wants to talk about it. Here are some of the common explanations... The Erwin Center: The size (16,231) and the impersonal nature of the glob on Red River are often sited as the reason why fans don't fill each and every cushy seat. The Erwin Center -- a multi-purpose building able to handle an ice show, a circus, a Tom Petty concert, an EST convention, registration day, and basketball -- is, by definition, not an intimate place. It serves all of these functions adequately but there are better places to see the Ice Capades, Tom Petty, groove to the ESTs, do your registering, and watch a basketball game. To be honest, I too believed the huge Drum was the primary cause for crowd apathy. It's too bad facts get in the way of a good theory.
Duke, a basketball hotbed of wild fan and student support, does, in fact, play in a relatively small gym. Cameron Stadium seats only 9,314. However, UNC's Dean Dome seats 21,000. KU's Allen Field House seats about the same as the Erwin Center. Indiana's Assembly Hall holds 17,000 insane Hoosiers. Michigan's Crisler Arena seats 13,562. Arkansas' new Bud Walton Arena, 19,000. Kentucky's Rupp Arena, the Taj Mahal of college basketball, seats 23,000. So much for the too-big theory. People complain it's too cavernous to make much noise, but this is simply bullshit. I've been to girls' games where there were 6,000 fans. The noise could be deafening. Small bands of Aggies make way more noise than seems proportionate to their numbers. When the fans get into a game, the Erwin Center can and will quake. Sound doesn't get lost. It just needs to be made...
Texas fans are late and apathetic: I've been a season ticket holder for 20 years. Games have always started at 7:35pm. I've missed entire first halves this season, because I keep forgetting the 7pm tip-offs. It's a bad, unnatural start-time, created to accommodate all-powerful television. Drive home from work, pick up some laundry, pickup Billy at basketball practice, maybe scarf down some dinner, and rush to the game for a 7pm tip. You try it.
Then there's the Longhorn Foun-dation's members, who slowly straggle into their arena seats, downstairs in the Burnt Orange Room, chit-chatting and drinking gin, also caught up in the rushed 7pm syndrome. On the other hand, there are the 1pm Sunday tip-offs. Prominent talk show hosts seem to find this "inconvenient." When exactly, Jeff/Bill, is a convenient time? 2pm? Maybe 7pm? Jesus, guys, games all over the nation start at 1pm on Sundays. You're really groping when you get this far down on the excuse barrel. The fans aren't really apathetic, just kinda old, lacking the old paint, the chest fervor of our student days. Which leads nicely to...
Where are the students? Well, they're at home or in their dorms watching ER. And why is this? Because the poorly promoted seats available to students, on the whole, suck. Many are located in the upper level where a mountain goat might get vertigo. This, Tom, is very, very bad. It's a situation in which you should get more involved. Why doesn't the athletic department make damn certain the student basketball ticket package is aggressively promoted everywhere on campus? Slick posters in every dorm and frat lodge... flashy reminders in registration packets.
Why don't students get blocks of prime seats? The an$wer is money. A personal story: When I got my seats, back before there was a basketball program to speak of, I was required to make a payment to the Longhorn Foundation to get "priority seating." I'm not sure what the Foundation does, but they do require this tithe each year. Every year, during the Bad Bob Days, I penned long-winded (and, I fancied, quite persuasive) letters to the ticket people requesting better seats. It never happened, even though it was obvious many seats were available. No explanations, same seats. Finally, I gave up. A few years ago, I was told, off the record, what the deal was. Nothing would have made the ticket folks happier than for me to follow through with my yearly threat to not renew my tickets. I was told my seats would be worth many thousands of dollars more (to the Longhorn Foundation) if they could sell them again. In other words, those empty seats were not put in a hopper on a first-come, first-serve basis. The seats were sold at a cost many times more than face value. This is nothing more than institutionalized scalping to the Nth degree. Texas is not alone in this policy but this rapacious practice is elitist and wrong. Virtually all of the lower-level tickets are distributed in this manner. More tickets could be made available to students as tickets holders choose not to renew but greed is at work. Surely, Penders is aware of this and has some input.
Here's my idea for a short-term fix. The University needs to create an easy, convenient way for ticket holders like myself to turn in tickets they're not going to use. This should be in operation right up to tip-off. Students would be given these tickets -- no charge -- first-come, first-served, at a designated place and time, again, right up until game time. It's not hard to imagine long lines of students waiting for a good, free seat This gets on the news. It feeds on itself. The wait becomes an event. Shazam -- a tradition is formed!
Austin is so much fun, every minute of every day, it's difficult for the busy, fun-loving citizens and students of the town to come to something so mundane as a basketball game. This theory is so absurd, it makes me shudder, but it's widely propagated as a major factor in poor Austin attendance. "Lawrence, Kansas," someone snorts (or Knoxville or Ann Arbor or Tempe or wherever). "What else do they have to do?" I've lived in Austin for 25 years. I've been to Lake Travis a handful of times. It's been years since I've been to Barton Springs. I mow the lawn, feed the dogs, work at a job, take out the garbage, eat dinner, go to the movies, have a drink. Not much different than a parallel fan in Tallahassee. Austin's not heaven on earth. I don't have an eye-popping orgasm each time I venture outdoors, trying to decide which wonderful thing I want to do today. In fact, from May until October, I try never, ever to go outside at all. Then, from November to April, I cough and sneeze. Wonderful Austin has nothing to do with poor attendance.
Penders is right, but it's odd he picks now to mention it. It's always been this way. When Penders first arrived, trying to resuscitate a barely breathing basketball corpse, he talked to every group and frat house who'd let him in the door. He was willing to do anything to whip up some interest in his new program. Does he still beat the bushes? UT's a huge school. Students must be the backbone of the maniacal enthusiasm he wants and the team deserves. He, more than any other single person, could start to rectify this long, oozing sore.
Write me: Coach36@aol.com
