FanPost

Regarding football attendance

There was a fanpost a couple weeks ago regarding Maryland's poor football attendance. Now I do understand that attendance for football is down in many places, but Maryland has had attendance issues for a while now.

I saw a lot of decent ideas discussed in the comments of the previous fanpost, including wi-fi that actually works, charging stations, cafes or other restaurants geared towards students, getting the frats involved in actually having their members attend vs. party elsewhere, more/better giveaways, seat backs, etc. I think many of these ideas and others are ideas that should be considered to help.

However, there was one suggestion that I was surprised to see only once, almost in passing.

New scoreboards.

Or, to be more precise, new video boards. HUGE new video boards.

Many folks prefer watching a game at home vs. attending in person. There are some sensible reasons for this, including the costs - both in money and in time - needed to attend a game. But another reason is the ability to see replays and other information on a huge screen.

Many football programs have upgraded their video boards as part of a process of upgrading their stadium, in part to give the fans those replays and other info while they're attending the game. While Maryland does have a relatively new video board in one end of the stadium, it's still quite small, and pitiful compared to most stadium video boards today. Not only is it one of the smallest videoboards for Power 5 teams, but it's also worse than those of a lot of Group of 5 teams and even some FCS teams.

Not only could a large video board be used for outstanding replays, but it could also be used to provide other entertainment - not just during the game's commercial breaks but BEFORE the game, to help get people into the stadium early.

Maryland football is competing with other options for people's time and money, including two local NFL football teams. The experience of attending a Terps football game will be compared to the experience of attending a Ravens or Redskins game. One of the things that both of those stadiums have is giant video boards. Maryland looks woefully inadequate in comparison to these, and also in comparison to other B1G videoboards.

Now obviously, having a large video board is not - by itself - everything. But it is important. Maryland fails, and fails badly, on this aspect of the gameday experience.

There are many things that can be done to help improve the gameday experience at the stadium. I believe a new video board MUST be one of them.

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