Want to Improve the Notre Dame Football Gameday Experience?
Notre Dame has done a lot to improve the gameday experience for Notre Dame football fans who travel both near and far over the last few years. They want to do more, however, and they are looking for your help. Notre Dame is currently accepting applications to join the Notre Dame Fan Council.
Here’s an excerpt from the release
“We are continually impressed with the level of engagement and dedication from our fan council members, some of whom travel from several states away to participate,” Notre Dame Assistant Athletics Director for Marketing Brian Pracht says. “Last year’s fan council consisted of 23 members with varying backgrounds and perspectives from multiple levels of fandom. Having such a diverse group to provide input has proven valuable to us as an athletic department in meeting the needs of our national fan base.”
Similar to years past, the fan council will feature students, alumni and non-alumni—all representing a cross-section of fans from Notre Dame’s athletic programs. Members will serve for one academic year, beginning in July 2017. Meetings will cover many topics that impact fan engagement and will feature guest speakers within the Notre Dame athletics administration and coaching staff.
Notre Dame Has Been Improving the Gameday Experience
While the gameday experience at Notre Dame still needs a lot of work compared to some other major programs, enhancements have been made. None bigger – literally – than the addition of a jumbotron that will be lighting up with highlights every home game from here on out. Notre Dame started playing music in the stadium in 2011 too.
As a fan, I think the biggest thing I would like to see change/improve with the gameday experience is a more raucous atmosphere. Other stadiums – even some smaller ones – are louder and rowdier. I took my girlfriend, a Texas A&M alum, to a game last fall and one of her first comments was “it’s not that loud in here, I thought this was a big game?”
The jumbotron and enhancements to the audio system should help create that louder atmosphere. The current audio system was not put in place to handle the kind of music and sound that has been played over the last five years. That will only go so far though. Notre Dame needs to change the “down in front” mentality that still exists in Notre Dame Stadium.
Remember When Notre Dame Stadium Was Louder With Less People?
It is not impossible to get Notre Dame Stadium loud and intimidating for opposing teams. Back in 1988 when Notre Dame Stadium was still holding just over 60,0000 people, this happened.
Of course winning and putting together a much better product than what we’ve seen over the last 20 years would go a long way too, but this Fan Council can’t be expected to be miracle workers.
The TV time outs are WAY to long. The ND games take close to 4 hours. How can you stay excited and cheer for a team, when after they score a touchdown, there is 2 minutes worth of commercials, then you kick an extra point, takes about 3 seconds. Them two minutes of commercials. Then you kick the ball off, and then another 2 minutes of commercials. How can stay motivated to cheer on any team for approximately 10 minutes, when you just witnessed about 20 seconds of football. Imagine the good old days, where you come up with a fumble recovery and the crowd goes crazy. The offense is so excited to get back on the field to start with a huge momentum play and the opposing team is deflated. Doesn’t happen anymore. We go to 2 minutes plus of commercials, both teams get to regroup and get back on the field at a very leisurely pace, so now you have lost any momentum that turnover might have caused. You can expect real fans to sit in a stadium for 4 plus hours to watch and stay excited about watching 60 minutes of football. In reality it is only about 35 minutes of football because the clock is running for a large portion of the time. All college and professional sports have been ruined by all the money that is made by the sports. The true sport fans hate it. It is a complete waste of time, and all they want to do is sell commercial time and make a ton of money in the concession stands. They get 80,000 people locked in their stadium for 4 hours and less than a quarter of the time you can actually watch football being played. It is a horrible product now to attend, it is much better watching it from home, way too much downtime for real sport fans to go. So sad.
One of our guys was on the council last year. Unfortunately, the information only flows one way. They’re not interested in feedback, especially any that might make them feel like the things they propose aren’t being taken well.
It’s a sounding board for their ideas. Don’t waste your time.
Remember this game. While it was loud, it wasn’t that loud. It was just a ploy Bo used in nearly every game regardless of the venue.
He intimidated the refs like only he and Woody could in the Big 10. He wanted perfect quiet while he ran his plays. They even
passed a rule that if the ref had to give the crowd two warnings to quiet down, the 3rd warning would result in a five yard penalty
against the home team. That’s why ND players are calming the crowd. Today with no penalty they would be calling for noise.
Bo was angling for either the quiet or the penalty. Nobody used it like he did. You could count on him holding up play at least
once a game when he was playing away. At UM stadium, naturally, he was clamoring for the refs to start play and ignore the noise
of 100,000 fans. A**hole to the end.
The last thing I want as a fan is to be pressured to stand and scream like an idiot. I want to watch the play talk to my friends about what I see and cheer loudly when appropriate. The idea of being surrounded by a group of screaming standing people all game every play will do nothing but keep me at home.
Sounds like something that can be accomplished in the confines of a living room with a nice Chardonnay! The down in front crowd kills the atmosphere in the stadium. If you don’t want to stand and cheer and shout why even go to the game? I’ll never understand people who want to go to a game to sit back and relax and be quiet. You can do that at home. Meanwhile opposing teams love playing in Notre Dame Stadium because it has become one of the least intimidating environments among all major programs.
Stay home then. No, seriously. This stadium does not need fans like you. This is the greatest football program on earth and it pisses me off that the fanbase has gotten like this. Every game is broadcast on national television in front of a golf clap crowd and the opposing players get pumped up because they know they won’t feel intimidated and if they have a good game, their name is gonna be on broadcast on national TV. Do you think Ohio State has this problem? LSU? Alabama? Clemson?
Eric,
What does “scream like an idiot” sound like? When is it appropriate to cheer loudly? Thanks.