Have we reached a point with Arkansas football where bountiful, almost over-the-top, enthusiasm has been replaced with almost total indifference or, worse, an expectation of failure?
It appears to be that way with many Razorback fans.
The one thing Frank Broyles always feared may have come to fruition.
“The worst thing in the world is if the fans don’t care,” he said one time in the 1970’s in response to folks screaming he should be replaced as the coach.
Over the past few years, fan interest appears to have waned with each passing year. This year, tickets sold averaged out to 61,458 per game. Actual tickets scanned has been considerably south of that number.
Yes, a lot of folks who bought tickets considered it a donation and didn’t bother showing up.
To be completely fair, it’s a trend all across the college football landscape. Many schools are downsizing their pigskin cathedrals dramatically. Oh, they’re not doing massive rebuilding, just replacing bleacher seats with armchair-type seats with cupholders.
That’s the direction college football is going.
It’s the cycle of college football continuing. Years ago, Yale and Rice had some of the largest football stadiums in the country. When Arkansas played in Houston against the Owls it was a guaranteed ticket for Hog fans that couldn’t regularly make a game. The same was true of the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
Now teams like Penn State and others are downsizing seating capacity.
It reminded me of the preacher at the church my grandparents attended down in Southeast Arkansas and they made expansions to the overall facility, but not the main sanctuary.
“It holds the same number of people it did before,” I remarked to the pastor when I was still in single digits of age.
“Young man,” he said as he gently put a hand on my shoulder, “you don’t build the church for Easter Sunday.”
Those words popped back in my head as I see empty seats at every game on television nearly every week.
Oh, you still have full houses at some places. But even at Alabama, Nick Saban chastised students for not coming to games or leaving early. Get ready, Nick, because that’s just the start of this current trend.
With every game live on television, there has to be some incentive for folks to spend the ever-increasing large sums of money to go fight traffic, brave the weather (hot, cold, rainy) and then sit on a bench, literally rubbing shoulders with people you don’t know … only to spend half the time watching big screens in each end zone.
College football has changed and Arkansas has right along with it.
The most important things now are sales of luxury boxes and club seats. For media coverage, many act like they’d be just as happy if everything went through ESPN, which is interesting as they continue to lose massive amounts of subscribers every month.
All of that has combined to place interest in Razorback football where it is now. It’s a massive shrug from a fan base that once was as crazy fanatical as any in the country.
The blame shouldn’t be placed at the feet of Hunter Yurachek or Chad Morris.
They inherited a mess created by other people who made you wonder if they spent an entire decade trying to sink Arkansas football as deep into the ground as possible.
Yurachek is working on his end of things. Morris is doing things nobody has done with the Hogs in decades, mainly increasing the talent level.
Winning will help things somewhat. There once was a time when winning guaranteed sold-out stadiums and made life great.
The business of college football today says that’s not the only thing that matters anymore.
