Last year, the Penn State game happened to fall over our Fall Break (as well as PSU’s). As a result of these two factors combined, there was a huge crowd of Penn State students at the away game for them, as well as a smaller-than-normal crowd of Michigan students at a home game. This actually had a pretty large impact on the crowd noise at the game. The Penn State student section seemed to be almost as loud (and sometimes noticeably louder) that the home student section.
Now, I won’t get into how dumb it was to schedule a home football game during our fall break, since I’m sure that didn’t even go into consideration when making the schedule. Even if it had, I wouldn’t be surprised if the athletic department had counted on students staying in town just because there was a home football game (as I’m sure many did). However, the point remains the same: A lot of PSU students showed up, in no small part because the game was during their Fall Break.
This upcoming season, the tables have turned. Yet again Michigan plays Penn State in the middle of October, and yet again this means it falls during study break for UM (Penn State’s academic calendar for next year has not yet been posted on the web). I’m going to make the call right now that Michigan students need to return the favor, and travel en masse to University Park, and show the Nittany Lions what true fans are. I’d love to see a massive road trip down there.
The athletic department also should feel a responsibility to encourage students to attend this away game. As they always do (though I’m not exactly sure how this process usually works), they will be given an allotment of tickets, and sell these to students. However, I don’t think that this will be enough. There need to be advertisements, etc. that encourage students to go (even if it means they can’t actually get into the game, or if they have to scalp tickets).
In the near future, I’m definitely going to be posting more resources about how to make this happen, because I really want this to go down. Despite their losses, Penn State is going to be a very solid team next year, and the Wolverines will need all the help they can get to ensure a win.
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