There has been a recent outcry at Notre Dame about a lack of attendance and spirit within the student section at football games. According to CBS Sports, this problem is also apparent at many other football schools. For example, for the 2016 football season, Missouri, Stanford, Maryland and USC all noted a decrease in attendance larger than 9 percent from the previous football season. This is an important issue for these school’s football programs, because football, especially at Notre Dame, is strongly centered around community. Fans play a part in the actual game, because larger football attendances help to both boost the excitement and enjoyment of the game experience as well as create a home field advantage through noise and hype.To help increase their student attendance, Notre Dame should decrease the price for the student season tickets or, at least offer an alternative cheaper ticket with farther away seating. Either of these options would allow for more people to purchase tickets and enjoy the football games.Seeing as football is an integral part to the Notre Dame community, decreasing the price of student tickets or offering a cheaper seating alternative would help make student tickets less of a financial stress and more attractive to the larger student body. With Notre Dame’s average cost of attendance for the 2017-2018 school year at $69,395, the need to charge fairly expensive prices for student tickets seems unnecessary and taxing for the student body.The implementation of a change to student ticket pricing is very reasonable and feasible when noting the amount of money Notre Dame has recently spent to improve the atmosphere and student experience within the stadium. These improvements can be seen by Notre Dame introducing the “33 Trucking” hats, replacing the old wooden benches and adding the video board to the stadium. These efforts show that Notre Dame is aware of this issue and is working out solutions to help increase and maintain student attendance. So, seeing the large amounts of money Notre Dame has already put into improving the game day experience, lowering the price of student tickets should not have too much of a financial impact.I believe Notre Dame has currently noticed the need and their ability to help improve the student experience and attendance at football games. While their current improvements and solutions to the student game day experience are appreciated and enjoyable, Notre Dame has missed the simpler solution of offering cheaper student season tickets. Notre Dame is fully capable of enacting this change, and through it they can help improve both attendance and the student experience of game day.
Thomas Lynch freshman Nov. 28
