Tracie Hitz, Associate Director of Marketing for the Northwestern athletic department, sent an e-mail advertising a forum on NU students’ poor attendance at sporting events to more than 500 students.
A grand total of 24 people actually showed up to the three forums Monday — enough for a decent student showing at a men’s basketball game during midterm week, or roughly the number of people in the discussion sections I skipped Friday to go to a Cubs game.
Putting aside for a minute the irony of almost no one showing up to a forum on why no one shows up to sporting events, the discussion actually shed some light on the marketing disaster that is Wildcats athletics.
NU laughably labeled the football squad “Chicago’s Team” while the Bears played downstate last season. And the team boasts of three Big Ten titles in the last seven years, which was once five years. Next season will it say “Three in eight years” and in 2010, “Three in 15 years”?
But this discussion concentrated on men’s basketball — and for good reason. Seven thousand screaming students joining the Wild Side would turn Welsh-Ryan into one of the toughest places to play in the Big Ten.
It didn’t take long to see why the forum was apparently a last resort for a marketing department that’s fighting a losing battle against NU’s wide array of other options. After all, instead of shelling out $5 to watch Big Ten basketball, students have their choice of 14 a capella groups, downtown Evanston (the dining capital of the North Shore!) and — your favorite and mine — a night spent curled up with an Econ book and a calculator.
Hitz opened the forum by asking the five students who attended the third session for any ideas that could potentially “tip students over the edge” into attending NU sporting events. But with seemingly every idea offered, Hitz had a reason why it would fail.
Midnight Madness to kick off the season? “No one would come,” Hitz said. “We can’t get people to come to games at 7 p.m., let alone midnight.”
How about public appearances by players and coaches? “We had Bill Carmody at Norris last year. People walked by and were like ‘We have a basketball team?'”
Maybe ASG could get involved? (We didn’t need Hitz to dignify that one with a response.)
And I had few answers for Hitz’s questions, such as “Why don’t people wear purple to the games?” (Um, it clashes with my eyes?)
But in the end, the only way students will start spending their precious time and money on sporting events is if NU starts putting out a better product. The 2000 football season spurred an electric atmosphere that the 2001 team promptly extinguished. And basketball crowds started to grow last season after home victories over Indiana and Purdue. Even tragically apathetic NU students will want to be a part of something once it’s successful.
For now, Hitz said she hopes to make basketball games “events” like football games through promotions, group outings and pregame tailgates similar to those held during the football season.
Free food? Now we’re getting somewhere. Hell, half the reason I went to the forum in the first place was the promise of free Papa John’s.
