The pregame presentation was significantly altered last year as compared to the prior two years. This past summer, they moved the student on-sale date to two weeks after the football ticket sale, so it wasn't literally below the fold in our emails. Oh yeah, and student tickets got way cheaper. They had more discounts for regular fans in 2013-14, with a few games featuring something like 11-dollar(?) upper-reserved tickets. I didn't remember anything like that in 2011-12 or 2012-13. (Come to think of it, I don't remember that this year, despite the success of last year's promotions.) The CreaseCreatures twitter account came into existence, which was created for the sake of fan engagement. They started doing the "season ticket holder of the game" thing. There might be a few other small things I'm forgetting, but maybe not. None of those would be described as appearing to beg fans and season ticket holders to stay, but it was all those things (some large, many small) combined that were noticeable. Comparing the changes made over the last 2 years to the 2 years before, when everything was the same all the time, the changes jumped out at me.
Also, I know that people in the athletic department were talking about it a lot 1-2 years ago.
