The emotional scar was reminder enough.
Dan Wilcox, a 29-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident, recently gave up the Irish football season tickets that had been in the family for decades in part because of similar horror stories.
Don Taynor a recent alum from Columbus, Ohio, put the avalanche of e-mails describing near evictions and real ones most succinctly and stingingly.
"I felt ostracized," he said of his most recent Notre Dame experience. "I felt like I could no longer cheer for my own university. Hell, I no longer wanted to."
Curb your enthusiasm?
Not if you're listening to the messages from Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, and, up until recently, head coach Brian Kelly.
Swarbrick, in particular, continues to be vocal, continues to search for methods and madness that will eliminate the golf clap as the prevailing symbol for passion inside Notre Dame Stadium, a place where the Irish have fashioned an underwhelming 17-16 mark since the start of the 2007 season.
Saturday's Irish home opener against Purdue offers a clash of rivals on the field and a clash of cultures in the stands.
"You have to change the culture," Swarbrick insisted. "The ushers are often reacting to a request from somebody else who wants the person to shut up and sit down -- and that's what we have to get to. That's what we're trying to change.
"We still want to be the most welcoming place in the country. But I don't want athletic directors telling me, 'We love playing here,' which is what they say to me with some frequency."
A veteran usher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that he would lose his job for talking candidly to the media, said there are plans in place to try to address the clash between Nu School and Old Money.
The ushers, for example, will offer to relocate people who are bothered by the noise to another section. Sometimes, they just use common sense and tell the folks who want to sit down for the whole game to swap seats with the fans in front of them who want to stand.
"But what happens so often is that somebody gets confrontational and it escalates," he said. "It sounds like such an easy issue to handle, but it really isn't, because the ushers -- we're actually caught in the middle.
"What I've noticed is there is a group of season-ticket holders who are the ones who are complaining it's too loud. They're there for socializing. It's an event. It's not a sporting event. It's not something to get raucous at.
"Then there's the other group there and they want to have a good time. They want to cheer on the Notre Dame team."
The ND administration has upgraded the stadium sound system and infused music -- notably stadium anthems such as Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" -- into the argument. They've floated test balloons about FieldTurf and JumboTrons.
"It's about building that culture and that psyche," Swarbrick said. "The music is part of that and ... and over time we'll look at other things that can contribute to that excitement. But we're going to be very mindful to that tradition of Notre Dame.
"We want this to continue to be the Augusta of college football, and to do that you can't be like every other venue."
royal rumble results sag awards 2012 kyra sedgwick honor killings mary tyler moore x games pro bowl
No comments:
Post a Comment