When the announcer at Aggie Stadium utters the popular phrase, “Are there any Aggies in the house?” that is usually the time when everybody gets “crunk” and makes noise, which is supposed to boost the team up and help them make a play.
Only that phrase has not been as potent this year as it has been in the past. For one, with the exception of Homecoming, there have not been big crowds at football games this year. And the phrase doesn’t seem to be helping the Aggie football team make plays this year, but that is mainly because we are not a very good football team.
Getting back to the issue of attendance at football games, it makes me wonder if the attendance would be better it the team was still in the running for a conference championship. Everybody loves a winner, right?
The only problem with that theory is last year’s game against Hampton University. It was mid-November and both the Pirates and the Aggies were undefeated in the MEAC. A spot in the playoffs was on the line. The sky was overcast and temperatures were somewhere in the 50’s, with a slight, cool breeze.
It was perfect drinking, uh, I mean, football weather.
Despite what was at stake, Aggie Stadium was far from packed to capacity. The announced crowd, which was only around 18,000, had thinned to about 12,000 after halftime.
Even more astonishing, the game was not decided until late in the fourth quarter on a Theron Thomas interception. Until then, it was everything you could ask for in a championship game – big plays, momentum swings and guys giving 110% percent on every play. But alot of people chose to stay indoors and listen to the game on the radio, I guess.
Is football not popular this year? Is the team only giving 109 percent this year, thus leading to fan disinterest?
The home opener of the 2004 season came Sept. 25 against Elon University, which is about 20 minutes east on Interstate 40. If this I-40 matchup is becoming a rivalry you wouldn’t know it by looking at the attendance figures. Crowd noise was not a factor in A&T’s 19-17 win.
With the exception of Homecoming, there is no single game that draws a big crowd to Greensboro. Surely ticket revenue is on the minds A&T athletic administrators. Here are some suggestions I have for boosting attendance:
A) Drop the game against North Carolina Central University and start playing Winston-Salem State again. They are both Div. II schools, so there is not much difference.
B) Drop the game against NCCU (I’m repeating this for emphasis) and play another big white school like Wake Forest or Duke. That game would have an outside shot at being televised locally. Everybody knows we love to be on television.And finally,
C) Keep the game against NCCU (I reconsider) and just play the daggone game here in Greensboro!
- Chad Roberts