The Lions' Pride

I agree with the more student tix idea... Def would help initially and create incentive for alumni to buy tix.

Respectfully have to disagree with you regarding student tickets Jeff. The issue isn't that they don't show up on time (they've been doing that forever and the new gate system at the Beav for students has exacerbated the situation), it's that most of the time there's huge gaps in the student section. The Illinois game was a perfect example. At the end, there's this awesome YT of all the students walking over and gathering behind the end zone, to "help" stop that final FG. Well they wouldn't have had to do if it weren't for 30% of the student section missing. Yes it was an ugly weather game, but in years past we've still had students showing up in force in poor weather games. In my freshman year in 1998, we played Michigan state on Thanksgiving, and we comletely filled the student section. That didn't remotely happen last year.

They may buy them, but they sure don't show up. It used to be you could count on others snapping those tickets up in the secondary market, but PSU shut the secondary market for student tickets down. The solultion for empty seats caused by STEP isn't to give the students more tickets, because it would just create more empty seats. The solution is to fix STEP so people can actually afford to goto games. That's basically the only reason we've been seeing such poor attendence over the last 2 years.

Hey now, I was always on my feet during games!

Oh, come on. It was the first bad weather of the year, and it wasn't just a dusting. The entire stadium had bald patches, not just the student section.

No offense bud, not directed toward you, but the vast majority of the non-student sections are sitting and quiet no matter the situation.

No matter WHEN we show up, or for HOW LONG we stay, we are infinitely more important to the game atmosphere than the other 80,000 people at the Beav.

Who left that 247 on the field for Devon to trip over?

Small edit to a good article, Yesterday's student ticket sale was freshmen only that sold out in 32 minutes, my daughter was one of the lucky winners. The seniors, juniors and sophomores have been the 3 days prior. Grad school kids today.

I don't know that winning will fix that. It's not like we sucked here. We had one poor season, coming off of like 4 good to great years, that included the 7th highest winning% and a couple of Big 10 titles. The season after we beat LSU in the Cap One Bowl, we struggled with a freshman QB and a injured, young D - but generally PSU fans have always been ok with a rebuilding year here and there, and still turned up in force the next season.

From Game 1 onwards. there were obvious signs of attendance issues.We call ourselves among the most passionate fanbase in America for good reason, and for Penn State fans to leave pockets of seats like that, in a year where we started 8 - 1, it goes way beyond what's happening on the field.

IMO, we need to ditch STEP, and rethink that entire idea. If you want more revenue out of fans, just raise ticket prices by like $5 across the board. But there's a definite limit to how much Pennsylvanians are willing to pay for a season ticket.

We also need to re-think how we execute student tickets. Let them sell the tickets to whomever they want in the secondary market.

I'm not sure about STEP but PSU sure was hard to enjoy watching. I live in Florida and don't make it to many games. But often when watching PSU games on the tube, I found myself checking out other games which I never would have done before. I used to make 8 hour round trips to see every PSU home game but feel reasonably sure I wouldn't have been doing that lately. If the new staff is as capable as they appear to be, the stands will again be full.

thats becuase they keep messing up the tickets they hand out, my buddies and i try to get in earlier then most (before the game starts) but sometimes they would send u in the worst seats, and people that come later end up in a better section, which is infuriating!!!! every student by the third game would enter the stadium and then just sit wherever they wanted because the ticket situation was a joke and not enforced

Yea I've heard some stories about this. Students have always been a bit late, but I think Penn State made the situation a lot worse. I don't mind students showing up late, or leaving early in a game that's competitively over, but rather when they don't show up at all.

To put this in persepctive, during the dark years, the students and rest of the stadium would mostly fill up. We had better attendence in back to back 3 - 9 seasons then we did last year IMO. It was actually selling point for kids like DWill and Justin King. They saw the passion of Penn State fans.