Is Fan apathy setting in?

NIL might be the reason, but if we were actually a major player, interest would be there. I think Gator fans realize that in football and basketball next year will not be great. Hard to get excited over the good possibility of a two mediocre teams. Look at gymnastics, there is great interest. Over 6000 fans at the last meet. Winning cures everything!

 

I will always love Gator football because I was practically born into it. I remember listening to Gator games with my Dad and and Grandad in the early 50’s when Otis Boggs brought play by play to Gospel Island through our old Emerson radio.
That said: A lot have things have occurred over the years that has tested my Gator fanaticism. It started with taking away and drastically reducing parking and tailgating areas areas for a lot of fans who don’t have Bull Gator stickers on their windshield.
Then prices escalated through the roof and when I wrote a letter to the Gator Booster president several years ago expressing my disappointment I received a nice reply that didn’t satisfy me at all. It seems that we kept jacking up prices almost every year because everyone else was doing it. Now ticket prices have leveled off but, only because attendance is down. Not drastically, but college football attendance is on a downward trajectory nationwide. The powers that be have priced many folks out of the stands are now feeling the inevitable consequences.
I still attend a few home games every year but watch the balance of our games on television. The amount of time a broadcast devotes to commercials is utterly and completely ridiculous. When watching my Gators I’m pretty locked in, but if I’m watching another game and I try to surf from one game to others during commercials, more often than one would rationally believe I find two or three games ALL experiencing commercial breaks. That’s frustrating.
I could go on. Concession prices, ($9.00 for a freaking beer), and of course the real haymakers, NIL and the transfer portal have all taken a chink out of this Gator’s armor, but I’m too old to change.
Go Gators!

 

I wonder about the future fans of football. When I was a kid playing in the early 70’s, most kids played football and baseball for a few years. I have six boys from 17-30 and only the 30 year old played any football. For the most part, fans are adults that played the sport as a kid and I don’t see the fanbase being replaced as we all move on. The younger generations don’t care nearly as much about football and there’s nearly as much interest in soccor in kids less than 30. Soccor wasn’t even an option when I was a kid. I think it was around 1980 when my sister started playing soccor and that was girls only, not offered to boys.81-82 I started to have friends tgat played soccor but we kinda looked down on those kids as not good enough to play football. Times have certainly changed and a lot more kids are playing soccer than football it seems.

 

College football attendance rose in 2022 with largest year-over-year increase since 1982 - CBSSports.com

 

Yep, that and it seems more parents are hesitant to have their sons suit up for tackle football over concerns about concussions etc.

 

An undefeated season would have something to say about that since it has never happened at UF

 

And I still am optimistic that it will happen..

 

And I just read that UF's attendance actually rose this past year...

 

I feel like the closed practices and the coach speak, and the consequent lack of fan reaction/interest are the result of coaches hesitancy to write a "check" if you will. Like I just read an article whose headline reads Offensive Coordinator Raves about Mertz. I read the article and Rob Sale says nothing about how practice is going, but says Mertz is working hard in playbook/prep/film room. Like no one will say ("write the check") "Mertz threw X number of picks due to inaccuracy, Y number of picks due to throwing to the wrong receiver (misread), jtherefore we are doing ... to improve accuracy and ... to improve decision making." And then he has to go cash that during the season. Like, we had very few sacks last year, if that continues the defense will continue to struggle, what is being done to improve it. Other wise it is just worthless offseason verbiage, and no one is interested much less excited.

 

I will always be a Gator, and I will always watch our Gator sports teams play. That said this new pods system SUCKS OUT LOUD... That killing of our current rivalry games pisses me off to no end.

And putting our SEC Conference in the hands of Disney/ESPN... for 10 FREAKING yeas is a HUGE mistake, IMHO. All while the BIG gets no less than 3 Networks to carry their sporting events. That means that they will NOT be at the mercy of one network corporation monopolistic policies like we SEC conference teams will be.

That has me fired-up pissed at whomever is letting Sankey do to to our SEC conference.

So, we get a bit more money, that's good, but we lose almost all of our annual game rivalries and we'll be put is pods with a 2-6 game rotation that will screw The Gators even harder than they screwed our cross division games up before.

No more Tennessee... pisses me off to no end.
No more LSU game ... pisses me off.
And the latest projections are that we get Oklahoma as a permanent rival? I like the idea of playing them and Texas on a rotation bit NOT as an annual game.

I don't need anyone's apathy, I will still see my Gators play in all sports, but this Sankey will be fired if this backfires..

So, I guess I will have to just get used to SUBPAR Game-day presentations... with clown announcers... with ESPiN at the helm. And get used to incessant in-game cut-ins for some other freaking sport that I don't give a freak about. I do NOT care about Major league records being broken, especially not during may Gators' games being telecast.

However, even after all that $hi!-ness... I will NOT miss one Gators' game.

 

I thought beers were $12 last year. I didn’t buy any, so I could be wrong. Either way, that is some overpriced beer, and you don’t even get a souvenir cup to take home (or to leave in the stands for some kid, or me, to pick up).

 

NIL is the biggest thing, it’s taking a sledgehammer to the game along with the win at all cost programs we compete against.
But also coach without a lot of charisma. Two straight losing seasons, a decent but not great recruiting class, a terrible defense, decent but hardly exciting offense, and now 15 years since we won an SEC title while our (co)biggest rival has won the last two titles.
Not sure where the enthusiasm would come from short of just plain loyalty.

 

I stopped watching the NFL the first year I was a Gator and it’s not because we were the best. Granted, we were good but no, I stopped watching the NFL because it got boring.

College football was exciting because every game mattered A LOT. You don’t see people smiling after losses (players), the best you could do is see your favorite journey of a college player make it to the NFL of even more.

College football is/was better for so many reasons and it’s not just winning.

Why do you think the stadiums for low level teams even used to sell out at 70-110k when the NFL could never do that. Ever?

 

At Raymond James, many moons ago lol, 2 waters and 2 hot dogs were over $25...

 

Most games last year were sold out..average attendance was over 88,000..and since I go to the games..I see and hear lots of enthusiasm from Gator fans in the Swamp...even the Eastern Washington game

 

Because of hope with the change and a good schedule.
Let’s see how next year goes.

 

It will go just like the other 38 years I have had season tickets..and have attended games..during great seasons and poor seasons..you support your team..that's what fans do..the Swamp will be full and loud

 

"just win baby" THAT will cure everything

 

It has for me. On a scale of 1 to 10, if my fandom as a student in the early 90s was a ten, then right now I'm at about a 3. I saw a recruit on TV this year asked why he chose a particular school and his answer was that it wasn't just what they could do for him on the field but off the field in terms of his brand. His brand! Us fans are a joke to these players. A means to an end. Just a bunch of fools that think college football means something. They don't care about the fans or the school, just their brand and their future. Which is why it is rare that I'm not working on my laptop while I watch the game. Can't justify taking time away from my business and making money for my family so that I can watch someone else making money doing their job. Nobody is stopping their job to watch me work (admittedly, even my wife thinks my job is boring). Would it help if they won more? Sure. But I have certainly lost more interest than I probability would have if the NIL and portal hasn't come along.