There will be a noon football pep rally today at Coffman Union that will include coach Jerry Kill, athletic director Norwood Teague and University of Minnesota president Eric Kaler. The event is part of a 2012 marketing plan to promote Gophers football to students. From student orientation to the pep rally to an email message from quarterback MarQueis Gray sent to 42,000 students, the athletic department has been reaching out to students in the days leading up to tomorrow’s opening home game against New Hampshire.
“It’s a pretty extensive plan (to reach students),” associate athletics director Jason LaFrenz told Sports Headliners. “We’re selling where they’re at.”
But when fans show up at TCF Bank Stadium tomorrow the most empty seats in the four-year-old facility could be in the bowl end—the student section. That’s sometimes been the reality in past seasons, including 2011 when student season ticket sales dropped to a TCF Bank Stadium low of 5,600.
Student season tickets ($84 for seven games) will be sold for awhile but it seems likely the final total will be 4,500 or less—way below the 10,000 in the stadium’s first season of 2009 that filled up the bowl end. The totals in 2010 and 2011 were 7,800 and 5,600.
This is the first week of classes for fall semester at Minnesota and 3,400 student season tickets had been sold as of this morning. “We all want to sell more season tickets,” LaFrenz said.
To help fill the student section tomorrow, the Gophers have distributed 5,500 free tickets to freshmen. “We’ve never done that before,” LaFrenz said. “We’re curious to see what happens.”
The athletic department is also selling a $25 ticket package to the public for the first two home games that includes a hot dog and coke. Those ticket holders will sit in the stadium’s bowl end.
Critics question the effectiveness of the athletic department’s marketing in selling student tickets. The opinion here is it’s easy to criticize but to market a product there has to be an attractive product and an audience that wants to buy the product.
During the last 20 seasons the Gophers football program has produced 50 wins and 110 losses in Big Ten Conference games. During that period the Gophers were mostly at or near the bottom of the league standings. Minnesota last won a conference championship in 1967. The Gophers haven’t been to a New Year’s Day bowl game since 1962.
Minnesota’s overall record the last two seasons is 6 wins, 18 losses. The Gophers are 19-31 overall and 10-30 in the Big Ten since 2007. The program hasn’t won a bowl game since 2005.
Students at Minnesota—if they grew up following football—are more likely to be Vikings fans than Gophers followers. That’s almost certainly a valid assumption about students who were raised in the state, surrounded by adults and peers who prefer the Vikings and the powerhouse image of the National Football League.
Most of Minnesota’s 50,000 students don’t reside on campus. That means a less captive audience for football games and other on-campus activities. And that’s been a problem for decades in drawing students to athletic events.
TCF Bank Stadium wasn’t sold out for a single game last season, despite the presence of an unusually attractive home schedule that included Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota State and Wisconsin. Those schools are box office attractions to many Minnesotans, including students, and the four programs brought thousands of rival fans to town.
Last season the Gophers averaged 47,714 in their 50,805 seat stadium—a facility that is among the newest and best in college football. Unless the Gophers contradict predictions of another unproductive season on the field, attendance is almost certain to be less than in 2011.
LaFrenz said public season tickets ($275 for seven games) renewed at 90 percent and new season buyers are being added. The public total as of this morning is 29,977, according to LaFrenz. Combine the near 30,000 with (maybe) 4,000 student season tickets, and (maybe) an average of 6,000 from single game attendees (including freebies) and the Gophers might average 40,000 fans in 2012.
That would be the lowest home average since 39,996 in 1993. Not so good, but remember part of the adult population in this town and state is as apathetic about Gophers football as the young academics in Dinkytown.
And not so bad when compared with the 16,013 who showed up in Henderson, Nevada to watch Minnesota defeat UNLV last week. That attendance was interesting and so too were the crowds involving some other Big Ten teams. Illinois, Indiana and Purdue—all programs that have produced plenty of heartache and indigestion for their fans during recent autumns—drew home crowds last Saturday of 43,441, 41,882 and 40,572.
If Kill turns the Gophers into Big Ten winners, the athletic department won’t have any problem besting those crowds.
Football & Other Notes:
New Hampshire receives $375,000 for tomorrow’s game at TCF Bank Stadium. Oregon head coach Chip Kelly was New Hampshire’s offensive coordinator before joining the Ducks in 2007. The Wildcats run a spread offense with a 4-2-5 defensive alignment.
“They’re going to snap it 90 to 100 times a game,” Kill said. “They’re no‑huddle offense. They’re going to get up, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
New Hampshire receives a smaller financial payout from the Gophers because the Wildcats are an FCS school. Western Michigan, an FBS school that will play at TCF Bank Stadium a week from Saturday, will receive $750,000. Syracuse, the Gophers’ final 2012 nonconference opponent, will earn $250,000 for playing here. That amount is based on a home-and-home arrangement where Minnesota played at Syracuse in 2009.
New athletic director Norwood Teague talking about future football scheduling: “I think with scheduling, the way I feel about it is that I want Jerry and his staff to do it. I’ll monitor it. …I don’t micromanage that.”
Last month, before the Gophers opened their season, KFAN’s Dan Barreiro predicted Minnesota will start the season with a record 7-1.
In its initial NFL power rankings, espn.com has the Vikings No. 30 among 32 league teams. The Jaguars, the team that opens the season against the Vikings on Sunday at Mall of America Field, is ranked No. 29. The top five: Packers, Patriots, Giants, 49ers and Texans.
Vikings fan and supporter Larry Spooner will sound the Gjallarhorn before the game. He will represent fans and supporters who backed legislation for the new downtown stadium.
Ex-Vikings tight end Mike Mullarkey, now in his first season as head coach of the Jaguars, began his coaching career as an assistant at Concordia University, St. Paul. Mullarkey was head coach of the Bills from 2004-2005, compiling a 14-18 record.
The three Vikings quarterbacks have a total of 13 starts in NFL regular season games. Starter Christian Ponder, now in his second season, has 10 starts while third-year and No. 2 QB Joe Webb has three. McLeod-Bethel Thompson, signed as a free agent in January, has never played in an NFL regular season game.
Coach Leslie Frazier talking about Thompson: “I like his arm strength that shows up. He has accuracy, but his command is one thing that really got all of our attention. Going all the way back to OTAs and doing the things that we did back in April, he has some confidence and some swagger about him. And you like to see that in (a) young guy and he has some talent to go along with that. He has some things that you’d like to try to develop over time and see where he ends up going.”
St. Thomas and Saint John’s, both winners in their non-conference games last Saturday, have games against UW-RiverFalls and UW-Eau Claire tomorrow. Then on September 15 the Tommies play at Saint John’s in a much anticipated MIAC opener. (St. Thomas defeated UW-Eau Claire 27-24 last Saturday.)
MIAC football teams were 7-0 in nonconference openers last weekend.
Last week Becker High School coach Dwight Lundeen won his 300th career game, while Adrian’s Randy Strand coached his 200th win and Springfield’s Paul Dunn got career win No. 100.
The announcement about Rochester manager Gene Glynn joining the Twins in September prompts speculation about changes for next season. While it will be stunning if manager Ron Gardenhire doesn’t return, a shake-up in the coaching staff wouldn’t be surprising given the Twins’ on-field performance the last two years.
Glynn, the Waseca native, impressed at Rochester. So, too, did hitting coach Tom Brunansky, the former Twins outfielder.
While releasing its conference schedule last week, the Big Ten office noted that six league teams were included in the early preseason national top 25 ranking by Andy Katz from espn.com: No. 1 Indiana, No. 5 Michigan, No. 8 Ohio State, No. 9 Michigan State, No. 22 Wisconsin and No. 25 Minnesota.