EDITORIAL: Stay in the stands
It has become a dispiriting trend: The student section at home football games is abysmally empty during the second half of every game.
It's true the football team is not as good or as exciting this year as it was in the Dan LeFevour days, but when Central Michigan is tied with the 23rd ranked team in the nation at halftime, as it was last Saturday against Northern Illinois, staying put should be a no-brainer.
Everybody in that student section should have been thinking about an upset at halftime, preparing to be just as loud and intense in the second half as it was in the first.
Instead, more than half the student section dissipated by the time the teams started playing again, and by the game's end, it was practically empty.
That must have been dispiriting for our team. Crowd noise is a factor in a game. It's the reason why teams love playing at home. While a lack of halftime adjustments on the part of the coaching staff or simply being outmanned by a better team might have led to the loss, a lack of crowd noise probably played at least a small role in the loss on Saturday.
A prime example for the noise factor came toward the end of the first half on Saturday when Northern Illinois was threatening to score while tied at 14 apiece. With under a minute left, a timeout was called, and the stadium's speakers proceeded to blare "Fireworks" by Katy Perry. On the ensuing play, the crowd continued to sing the song loudly after it stopped playing. A tipped pass was then intercepted by linebacker Justin Cherocci. No points.
That fine defensive play was the result of a well-executed scheme, but again, the crowd noise might have played a factor. This is just a microcosm of what could happen if CMU came out of the tunnel in the second half and was greeted with the same amount of energy and intensity it received in the first half. Maybe then the final score wouldn't have been so lopsided.
And if the cold is such a problem, why even show up in the first place?
Football is supposed to be watched in all kinds of weather. No Green Bay Packers fan would have left a game like that, despite the fact that their stadium is a frozen tundra past November.
The issue here is the students.
The university and athletics department have done just about everything they can to boost crowd attendance, which came to a whopping 18,796 on Saturday's homecoming game.
They have even done promotional games throughout the game whenever playing time hits a lull to keep the crowd in it.
T-shirt cannons, field goal attempts by fans and corn-hole toss should be a hook line and sinker with most college students.
This is coming from a school that used to sweep the attendance records within the MAC throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
At least back then, students left after the first half because CMU was beating their opponent so badly.
But now, the general apathy the student body shows to the football team might be hurting the program more than students realize.
