It may seem strange to those that know me, but I am, in fact, a closet football fan. I may not sit in front of my television through the fall and watch every game I can find on cable, but I do love going to the games. As this is Texas, I doubt I’m the only person that feels this way.
However, attending home games at UH as a student is a poor experience. Student seating is restricted to four of the absolute worst sections in the entire stadium. The seats are located at the end zone on the southeast corner of the stadium, not too far from the opponent seating area. This is an unacceptable situation, considering that the Athletics Department gets the lion’s share of student fees that are available to various organizations.
The student seating area’s biggest problem is the sun. As football is not a game you play in the morning, the sun will always be in the western sky when a game is in session. As students are seated on the eastern side of the stadium, this means that they are forced into a position where watching the game means looking into the sun’s glare. This is an uncomfortable position, and hinders students’ ability to enjoy the game.
In addition to being seated facing the sun, the field position is terrible. One must crane one’s neck to see the action, unless the game has entered the red zone. And while those are emotional times in the course of a game, they’re hardly the majority of any football game.
To add injury to insult, the concession prices at Robertson Stadium are outrageous. A soft drink that would cost $1.15 anywhere else on campus costs $3 at a football game. What should be cheap beer suddenly becomes $7 for a 12-ounce plastic cup – and the only beer available is Bud Light, which tastes like horse urine. Obviously, someone has forgotten the fact that college students are in debt up to their eyeballs, and do not have a house to mortgage for concession funds at football games.
It is quite obvious that the Athletics Department does not care about its student fans. As such, we as students should not care about them. I propose that students stop attending sporting events until they are afforded better seating and concession prices are lowered.
What’s more, the Student Fees Advisory Committee should refuse the department’s annual request of about 30 percent of the student activities budget. After all, the Athletics Department is not self-solvent, and cannot be so without winning a national title in at least one-revenue sport – and because our conference alignment, this is not possible in football. This is a truth of Division I-A athletics across the board.
And though students are the life of the University and its ventures, we are foolishly taken for granted.
McCormick, a computer science post-baccalaureate, can be reached via [email protected]
