The Ohio State-Texas season-opening clash at Ohio Stadium is still more than three weeks away, but the department of athletics offered a preview of some changes coming to the old gray fortress on the banks of the Olentangy River on Tuesday morning.
Here are a few of their ideas:
Block ‘O’ will be united in the South Stands
This is a result of the decision to build a new premium seating section at the field level on the south end of the stadium. It will be interesting to see how this looks since it seems like half the students aren’t there when most games begin, but it has potential to increase the volume.
T.B.D.B.I.T.L. is moving back to the north end
This was previously announced and is related to the other changes going on in the south end of the stadium.
The plan is for the band’s sound to be more amplified by the concrete under their seats than the metal under the bleachers in the sound end, but they are also going to mic up the band.
I like this.
The victory bell will be a bigger part of the day
Rather than waiting until the end of the game to ring the bell, Ohio State is planning to use it to signal the crowd to get loud on third down. They were already doing something like this with AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” at least some of the time.
Additionally, there will be a Victory Bell Ringer of the game who will ring the bell before the team takes the field. Archie Griffin will be the first when Texas comes to down.
Hang On Sloopy might not play at the same time
This seems both risky and unnecessary, but they say instead of waiting for the end of the third quarter when the song is traditionally played, the band could strike it up at a dramatic moment
I guess they are going for the Pittsburgh Steelers thing where they play “Renegade” at a time they think is necessary to rev up their crowd.
THE Towel
Ohio State is also stealing the Terrible Towel from Pittsburgh in hopes of getting the crowd revved up and united. Of course, this is something they do many other places as well, and the towel will be scarlet and gray rather than yellow.
Brutus entrances?
This was the shortest entry in the announcement: Each game this year will feature a unique and iconic entrance for Brutus Buckeye, changing week to week to bring surprise and energy to fans in the stadium.
That has potential to be cool.
Buckeye leaves for the crowd
Fans will be able to earn a buckeye leaf whenever they force a timeout or false start, and those will be tracked all season on a big board in the stadium.
Overhauling the music and video board
A new game day anthem is going to be presented by someone called “Caamp” who is apparently from Columbus. That will be used to fire up the crowd in the first half, so we’ll see how that goes.
Overall they say they will have a new game-day soundtrack and new uses for the video board, which are sorely needed.
So… what do you think?
There is no doubt the game-day atmosphere has deteriorated over the years. Some of it is a matter of economics — as getting in got more expensive, the enthusiasm of the crowd seemed to wane — but I also think most of this is self-inflicted by the department of athletics.
In short, their management of games has been awful — and predictably so. When I was a student in 2001-04, the atmosphere was amazing at the stadium but got steadily worse at basketball games.
While the energy remained strong at football through 2005 and ’06, but it started to deteriorate after that, so what did the department do?
After destroying the basketball atmosphere with piped in music and too many activities during timeouts, they started meddling at Ohio Stadium using much the same playbook. You’ll never believe what happened next…
Nowadays the state of college football game broadcasts doesn’t help, of course, as commercial breaks get more numerous and longer. I get the need to fill some of that time, but generally less is more in these situations.
Too often, the crowd will go roaring into a break after a big turnover or touchdown or defensive stop only to have to get quiet for some promotion or presentation on the video board the puts the volume back to zero.
In the end, it’s up to fans to bring the energy. Hopefully that will happen and the university won’t try to over-manage the crowd. The loudest moments in any stadium are always organic.
Share your thoughts in the comments, or email me at [email protected].