Re: Average Men's Attendance
And that's not the point. The question is not people that "used to [make] it to the games," the question is why don't the people who are "that age" NOW go? Why aren't younger people replacing those people? Those people can't go forever. For any business to be sustainable, they need to cultivate new customers. From what I saw last night, just about everyone there was over 40 (except for 108 and 118 - the "end zone" student sections - one of which was basically empty).
A good point about BU, and perhaps other schools, doing a bad job of cultivating a fun environment for the students. BU and Agganis went so over the top with security measures over the past decade for the student sections that it zapped the fun out of the experience. I'm not saying cracking down on vulgar language was a bad thing, but they went miles beyond that.
Some examples:
- Having security guards positioned at the bottom of the sections whose sole job it was to stand looking at the students reading mouths to pick out anyone who might be swearing. No such guards were stationed in any other sections.
- Manually reading every poster at the arena entrance AND the student section entrance. No sign containing ANY reference to the opposing team or player in any capacity or that could be perceived as even the slightest bit negative was allowed. You couldn't make an "I Love Jerry York" sign. You couldn't make a "That was a bad call" sign. I even got flack back in my days for a sign that said "FAIL".
- Stationing security guards at the top and bottom of all stairways of student sections on guard for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. This in addition to the aforementioned mouth-readers. No such guards were stationed in any other sections.
- Extreme ticket-checking measures at the top of each student section. I'd heard accounts of guards not letting students into one section entrance if their seat was on the opposite side of that same section. Why? Who knows.
This created an atmosphere of needless scrutiny, feeling that one minor misstep or off-color word spoken to your friend would lead to expulsion from the arena, and that you couldn't go have fun on a weekend night with your friends cheering for your school. I'm not advocating that you can only have fun swearing and making a drunken fool of yourself - that rightfully was taken out. But if I can't jump up and down yelling at the opposing goalie telling him how hilarious it was that he just got five-holed, or make a sign ribbing Northeastern for having won nothing (at the time) of any relevance in decades, we've gone way too far. There are probably other reasons why the student experience has fallen off the map at BU and elsewhere, but the school and the arena have done an absolutely horrific job fostering a fun environment that still falls within the bounds of decency.
I was chatting with a friend from college recently who told me she remembers that going to hockey games as a student was her way of releasing the stress of school from that week. You could go there and have a blast with your friends, and get away from the pressures of academics. She didn't have to do that by showing up and acting like a drunken hooligan dropping f-bombs every five seconds, instead just by being with your friends, watching a fun sport, jumping around, yelling and screaming, and having a great time without fear of being suspended from BU for yelling at ref or telling the goalie that he sucked. They might've pregamed a couple of beers before going over, but that wasn't a necessary component of the experience and didn't lead to anything outside the bounds of decency. THAT experience has been sucked out of Agganis fully and completely over the years and it's crying shame that the kids who go there now don't have the opportunity to experience that. If you were a part of the Dog Pound in the mid-2000s when it was at its most recent peak, you'd be thrown out of the arena for 75% of the stuff we used to do - none of which involved any vulgarity.
tl;dr - get the unnecessary f-ing swearing police out of student sections, make the atmosphere conducive to having fun, and make being a student hockey fan fun again
