Thats because it wasn’t done in the past. The efforts I am talking about are the results of the basketball story and meeting with Greek representatives and some kids that run UL social media accounts. We will see if the new efforts work.
This guy was hired at some point after football season for that reason. He was in on the meeting with Maggard, the Dean and the Greeks.
https://ragincajuns.com/staff-directory/sam-demuzio/677
The sad thing is my daughter just did freshman orientation a few weeks ago. I asked her if anyone spoke about getting involved and supporting athletics and she said no. That would be a great place for a few coaches and players to speak and ask for support. They did sing the fight song though. Well she did, she said no one else knew it.
Massive miss and a crazy abandonment. But what can one expect when the Admins in charge never went to games when they were students.
Freshmen orientation is how Utah went from a nothing burger student section to one of the most involved in the country in less than a decade.
100,000 student members since it started in 2002.
https://ulink.utah.edu/s/1077/20/sig...gid=1&pgid=941
Hud reinvigorated our football program and got everyone excited. Higher home attendance and 40,000-50,000+ for our bowl games. Napier won, but did nothing to excite our fan base, hence low attendance even with Top 10 rankings. Dez is a Napier clone. Does not get out into the public and no speaking arrangements. He is a coach and only a coach, which is fine if you are at a Florida or LSU. At Louisiana, our football program needs to be marketed to students and to the public. Winning alone, especially vs. SBC teams, does not excite the fan base. Louisiana needs a much more effective marketing strategy to fill the stadium regardless if it is our current stadium or a renovated one.
Home games used to be exciting when we were winning and tailgating helped make it feel like a big time atmosphere that people wanted to participate in. Hud made that happen. But, post Hud, tailgating dwindled and no one ever addressed improving the in-stadium fan experience. So, how do you get the average fan excited when (1) he can watch the game on local tv and (2) there is a P5 game worth watching on tv that excites them more than watching UL play a South Alabama or ULM? Is anyone addressing the root cause of fan/student apathy and developing an effective marketing strategy to not only get people to the stadium but elevate the in-stadium experience? We can't do much with our SBC schedule, but winning again, having great tailgating again and creating a great fan atmosphere that people want to participate in can turn this around. But, I fear all we are doing is hosting football games and hoping fans and students show up. Not really a winning strategy.
Great points. I would like to cite the famous Costco story about leadership considering raising the price of hot dogs and the founder telling the CEO, "I will kill you if you raise the price of hot dogs."
Tailgating should be our loss leader. I know there were posters on here saying we needed to make money somehow, but not at the expense of what we were building atmosphere-wise. We priced out people contributing to football gameday atmosphere and lost them completely with COVID/ESPN+.
I remember a story on here someone told about the coach’s show at Pete’s last year. Said maybe 10 or so Cajun fans were there and coach des didn’t even acknowledge them. He walked in did his interview and left without saying a word. Not like there were hundreds of people there. Would have been easy to walk up to the fans and tell them he appreciated them coming. Would have taken all of 5 seconds. Des is a hell of a person but he’s a terrible people person. Oh well he is who he is
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