After another home football season at Camp Randall winds down for the Badgers this weekend, the UW Athletic Department's PR team will have a handful of issues to address when the offseason finally rolls around. Likely to be one of their biggest concerns is the empty section in the north end zone reserved for 14,000 student season-ticket holders. Yes, you heard me right.
A handful of people have expressed their discontent for the state of attendance in the student section for years. Whether it's ESPN broadcaster Chris Fowler, Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, or former Chancellor John Wiley, they haven't been quiet when pressing students to make it to the game by kickoff. The early part of this season even saw a revision to the ticketing policy that lasted all but three home football games before reverting back to the old policy.
In a recent Badger Beat column, Andy Baggot re-engaged in The Great Debate of the University of Wisconsin Men's Football Team: How do we get the students to show up on time? The most recent solution posed by A person much smarter than [Andy Baggot],"" in the Capital Times, which calls for charging students face value for season football tickets. This amount would be refunded to the original student rate of $140 if that student has ""perfect pregame attendance.""
Like the previous attempt to restructure the student seating program, this proposal falls short on a number of fronts. First, of course, are the obvious logical concerns with this approach. What about the student who sells their ticket because they wanted to go out of town to visit a newborn family member, or even worse, a sick one? Should these trips wind up costing them extra money because the student it was sold to showed up late? Why the Athletic Department would want to get into this game of paternalism is hard to fathom. Students tend to appreciate being treated like adults, not children.
Then there is the 'rational choice concern': It is anything but certain that such a surcharge would in fact work as a disincentive to showing up late. I am not sure that either psychology or economics would support the theory that disincentives would work in this instance. One, you are assuming students are rational agents at game time, when a majority of the student body is intoxicated - this is a big assumption to make. Two, levying fines to change behavior hasn't been proven to work in many other segments of life, so why should we assume it would here?
Finally - and most importantly in my opinion - concerns the seriousness such a trivial issue is receiving and has received in the past. Does it really matter that the student section isn't full at the start of the game? Any of the recent regulations imposed on the student fan base are, in effect, supporting the aesthetics of the stadium and our supposed reputation as ascertained by a national audience over a known loyal and boisterous student fan base.
However, more important than criticizing individual solutions is the fact that student attendance is even an issue. That this debate has continued for so long is a testament to our Athletic Department valuing money more than the sport itself. More important than scouting the best team or providing the best game-time experience is finding a way to ""look pretty"" on network broadcasts. Do we really want our athletics to amount to the live-or-die death matches that engulf universities like they do in, say, the SEC?
UW-Madison has never been the type of school to put athletics first, and it never will be. Last month, when Kiplinger's Personal Finance ranked this university ""14th best value"" and highest of any Big Ten school, athletics played absolutely no part in making such a decision. Most of our public notoriety, and the reason students attend UW-Madison comes - and will continue to come - as a result of academics. Although home football games are an exciting bonus to many students, they are in no way worth over $200 per season, or dictating when a student walks through the gates of Camp Randall.
It is unfortunate, and maybe telling, that the students seem to have both the right priorities and the right perspective in this debate, and neither are grounded underneath a beer bong. What matters is our studies during the week, our sense of community and our outlook on the future. As philosopher Harry Frankfurt has written, it's about ""the importance of what we care about."" In terms of sporting events, nothing we ought to care about has anything to due with arriving to a mere game on time.
Joseph Koss is a senior majoring in secondary education in social studies. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
