Virginia Tech entered Thursday’s game with West Virginia as a home ‘dog, with a 2-1 record that included a humbling loss to ODU, a struggling offense, not a lot of reason for optimism – and yet Lane Stadium was a rollicking sellout with 65,632 on hand minutes before kickoff, ready to serenade the team, as has been the case for years, to the strains of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
Win or lose, Virginia Tech football is a must-see event in Southwest Virginia.
The scene last night stands in stark contrast to the one 149 miles up the road in Charlottesville, where not even a winning team can get fans to games.
UVA football has reported attendance just over 40,000 for each of its first two home games, wins over Richmond and ODU, but those numbers were almost certainly inflated from the number actually on hand, more likely in the upper 20s to around 30,000 range.
And even with those underwhelming numbers, the gameday experience for UVA fans was marred by issues at concessions with understaffing and not enough on hand to eat and drink.
For all the excitement that you saw last night in Lane Stadium as the Hokies prepared to run out of the tunnel, you can see from the photo that I snapped above for last week’s UVA-ODU game as coach Tony Elliott led his team onto the field the scads of empty field-level seats.
I tweeted shortly after the riveting Tech entrance, “Enter Sandman” and the rest, to the effect that UVA AD Carla Williams should have somebody from her staff at every Virginia Tech home game the rest of the season to try to learn what Tech does to engage its fan base, and as you can guess, this one went over well with UVA fans, who assumed that I meant, copy Tech, which wasn’t what I was saying.
Not copy, but rather, learn from.
And if I’m Williams, I’m also sending staffers out to UNC, Clemson, Florida State, some SEC schools, to get ideas.
I was a member of the management of a summer college baseball team for several years, and I put this advice that I’m offering to Williams into practice, and though it’s been nearly a decade since I stepped down from that volunteer post, I still take mental notes whenever I’m in a stadium as to how the gameday ops are handled.
Because of my job, I’m in a fair number of venues each year, across football, basketball and baseball, and I’m not trolling here when I say, the UVA football experience is by far the worst of them all.
There’s literally nothing enticing fans to be in the stadium ahead of the kickoff, which is why you see the sea of empties as Elliott leads the team onto the field, and then during the game, there are far too many quiet times wasted on silly on-field and in-the-stands promotions that leave the bulk of those there to scan their phones to try to entertain themselves.
If nothing else, Williams could try to learn from the gameday atmosphere at UVA basketball games, at JPJ, which gives fans reasons to be in their seats before the tip, to see the team intro video ahead of the introductions of the starting lineups and coach Tony Bennett, and “Thunderstruck” from AC/DC getting us to the jump ball.
The rest of the night at JPJ is like a rock concert, it’s so loud, the music pulsing up from the floor, usually with a halftime show featuring a frisbee-catching dog or Red Panda, making it hard for fans to want to get out of their seats to hit the well-stocked concession stands because there’s so much going on.
JPJ is fun, and sure, it’s more fun because there’s a big banner hanging overhead from the 2019 national title run, but it was even fun last season when a rare rebuilding year ended with a third-round loss in the NIT.
There were just short of 9,000 empties in Scott Stadium for the 2019 home game with Virginia Tech, a game that had the Coastal Division title and an Orange Bowl berth on the line for the good guys.
Not even the prospect of advancing to the ACC Championship Game and the Orange Bowl, and beating Virginia Tech for the first time in 15 years, could fill the stadium up.
It’s not just about the winning, or the long run of mediocrity around that one good year.
The University of Virginia is investing $80 million in a new football operations center with the aim of building a consistent winner on the field. That’s money down the drain if Williams doesn’t figure out how to run the business part of football better.
UVA fans have already made it known that they’ll sit at home and watch a winning Cavalier football team if given the choice.
It’s up to Williams and her staff to make fans want to choose to be a part of game days at Scott Stadium.
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Chris Graham
