Syracuse Football: An Open Challenge to the Student Body of Syracuse University

The attendance issue with the Syracuse football program can often be a taboo topic. But lets enter the second part of our open challenge to the student body of Syracuse University.

We did another article questioning the nickname of the Carrier Dome. You can find that here Syracuse Football: Why is this still called the Loud House?.

I am trying to pinpoint the reason why no one has any fear of being crowded or having hearing loss watching a Syracuse Home football game. The only way that we could have an “Orange out” is if they put free seat cushions on every seat in the Dome. I blame the students, who won’t walk 100 yards from their dormitories to support their school.

Syracuse has 21,789 undergraduates and the student section is barely half full for most games resulting in student attendance at 5%. Which is embarrassing.

My vantage point comes from being a 7 year season ticket holder who drives every home game from Oswego, NY. My family and I drive from Oswego, park at the bottom of the hill, and walk the mile up ‘The Hill’ past the tailgaters, drunks and Jesus freaks shouting at me that I’m going to hell for taking my family to a football game. Why do you ask? Because my family and I love football and have adopted Syracuse University as our college team.

To put all this in perspective I could not afford to go to college. Yes this was a long time ago but even the $1,500 annual tuition was too much for me. So I joined the Navy. Why do I include this in this article? The annual tuition cost for SU is $55,872 a year.

Let that soak in while I drop the next factoid on you. Season tickets for Syracuse football is not free for students. No way sir they must pay. Now you are saying THAT is the reason that students are going to games and then I educate you with the knowledge that for students to have season tickets for football costs … $20.

Boom the cost of a pizza and a few brews for an entire season of games. Put that in comparison with the cost of basketball season tickets $199 and let that sink in. Yes there are more basketball games than football but the average cost of a football game is $2.85 for a student while the cost of a basketball game is $9.

Now you may say that I am surmising most of this. Well here are some unadulterated facts. November 14, 2015 we were playing the #1 team in the country, Clemson. What could be more exciting than that? Zack Mahoney was the starter and they were huge underdogs. Yet in the third quarter we were down by 7 points! Holding the number one team in the country to six points in the second half. While the attendance at that game was a paltry 36,736 fans out of the possible 49,000 for a sellout.

And I leave you with this fact, the University offered free tickets to the season opener hosting Colgate (in case $2.85 is too much). While apparently a free football game on a Friday night only resulted in an attendance of 31,336.

To the students of SU, Syracuse University is a prestigious school with an awesome legacy full of rich traditions and the halls echo with the voices of greatness and you are missing it and you should be embarrassed.