Will the band be at the game on Sunday?

[Born-a-Panther]

At Iowa, most of the winter break is covered by the alumni pep band. I'm not sure if there would be enough local interest for a UNI alumni pep band, but it would be cool if there was.

That's interesting. I had no idea. I'm genuinely curious how common this is.

[Wxcpanther]

At Iowa, most of the winter break is covered by the alumni pep band. I'm not sure if there would be enough local interest for a UNI alumni pep band, but it would be cool if there was.

Not sure if ISU does it every game, but I know they did the same thing for the Baylor game that I attended.

[Wxcpanther]

The worst part is that all of the promotions and stuff are all lazy video board based stuff that then instantly takes your focus off the floor and to the dead end of the arena and puts a spotlight on your ancient video and score tech. It's SUPER cringy. I don't need to see the same 6 middle aged couples kiss every Wednesday night.

Marketing and in-game atmosphere are there to keep attendance up when you're not having the seasons you want to have. Nobody gives a **** if the minor league hockey or baseball team wins or loses, they just want to have a good time. We don't provide that.

Genuinely asking, what would be a better approach?

[BCPanther]

Genuinely asking, what would be a better approach?

Those promotions work better with a hanging board so, let's do that!

Seriously though, on court games and stuff certainly get better response and interaction. More dizzy bat races, t shirt cannons, etc until we've got a board where the entire arena doesn't have to look away from the game floor.

They're doing a great job with what they've got but it's pretty stale. Need to steal from other places and get the sponsors on board.

[Wxcpanther]

Those promotions work better with a hanging board so, let's do that!

Seriously though, on court games and stuff certainly get better response and interaction. More dizzy bat races, t shirt cannons, etc until we've got a board where the entire arena doesn't have to look away from the game floor.

They're doing a great job with what they've got but it's pretty stale. Need to steal from other places and get the sponsors on board.

That was kindof what I was thinking, but wanted clarity that we were on the same page. I'd imagine that the contracts for the flex cam and things like that are set and they couldn't change what the thing is, right? Like State Farm has agreed to sponsor the sing along specifically, would it be that easy to change it to something else? I also wonder what more they could do from that perspective that they aren't already. I guess the carts aren't back this year, could switch someone to that, but that's usually a halftime thing which might limit sponsor interest.

[domedays]

I gave up this fight years ago, but it always drove me nuts that students don’t go to games.

the students can and need to be the leaders.

Get 150 college students in a section and they will create their own fun. People dressing up (why wear a banana suit to a game? I don’t know but people like it.) Students developing rude things to yell at opposing teams, or things to cheer as a group when the refs blow a call. doing things like the interlude or the jump around at Wisconsin, are fun when it is a whole group doing it. I would guess that part of the fun at Duke is camping out waiting for tickets and spending time with friends doing something different.

There should be an effort to get a couple dorm floors or fraternities to lead the way, showing up and being creative.
Maybe it’s been tried and failed but maybe we need to recruit groups rather than individually getting a slice of pizza, or a T-shirt that doesn’t fit after a three pointer.

Get the students to the games having fun and this in turn will help the atmosphere, and the atmosphere will bring in as many fans as winning games. The think the athletes we have right now are exciting enough athletes that kids will enjoy watching. But being part of something bigger, something they can do together is the fun part.

[UNIpanther99]

I gave up this fight years ago, but it always drove me nuts that students don’t go to games.

the students can and need to be the leaders.

Get 150 college students in a section and they will create their own fun. People dressing up (why wear a banana suit to a game? I don’t know but people like it.) Students developing rude things to yell at opposing teams, or things to cheer as a group when the refs blow a call. doing things like the interlude or the jump around at Wisconsin, are fun when it is a whole group doing it. I would guess that part of the fun at Duke is camping out waiting for tickets and spending time with friends doing something different.

There should be an effort to get a couple dorm floors or fraternities to lead the way, showing up and being creative.
Maybe it’s been tried and failed but maybe we need to recruit groups rather than individually getting a slice of pizza, or a T-shirt that doesn’t fit after a three pointer.

Get the students to the games having fun and this in turn will help the atmosphere, and the atmosphere will bring in as many fans as winning games. The think the athletes we have right now are exciting enough athletes that kids will enjoy watching. But being part of something bigger, something they can do together is the fun part.

Yep, this exactly. Find a core group like a club or a dorm floor. Give them all the pizza they want and free shirts. Let them run it and grow from there. It's been done before multiple times, it usually fades away over time, but you just have to keep doing it.

[ronfitch]

I gave up this fight years ago, but it always drove me nuts that students don’t go to games.

the students can and need to be the leaders.

Get 150 college students in a section and they will create their own fun. People dressing up (why wear a banana suit to a game? I don’t know but people like it.) Students developing rude things to yell at opposing teams, or things to cheer as a group when the refs blow a call. doing things like the interlude or the jump around at Wisconsin, are fun when it is a whole group doing it. I would guess that part of the fun at Duke is camping out waiting for tickets and spending time with friends doing something different.

There should be an effort to get a couple dorm floors or fraternities to lead the way, showing up and being creative.
Maybe it’s been tried and failed but maybe we need to recruit groups rather than individually getting a slice of pizza, or a T-shirt that doesn’t fit after a three pointer.

Get the students to the games having fun and this in turn will help the atmosphere, and the atmosphere will bring in as many fans as winning games. The think the athletes we have right now are exciting enough athletes that kids will enjoy watching. But being part of something bigger, something they can do together is the fun part.

I think this is more the case now - post-COVID - than it might have been 20 or 40 years ago. These kids were in middle and high school during COVID and missed out of a lot of social interaction in those years.

I have a 19 year-old in college (different school). This is a great generation of kids, but they really need some opportunities to blow off some stream. This can be one of those opportunities to just be silly and have fun. I suspect a couple of hours two nights a week to be with other people, SEEKING fun and silliness and being part of something would have great appeal.

[PantherAlum09]

Does UNI have a shuttle that runs from the dorms to McLeod? At the risk of sounding like a big baby, it gets dang cold on campus and that walk to McLeod was rough this time of year.

[dan_beeding]

At the risk of offending the great Tony Soprano ("Remember when is the lowest form of conversation"), there are some great experiences that this generation of students is missing out on.

I was lucky to be at UNI during some of the best years with regard to athletics and I look back fondly on that time of my life. The excitement around the McLeod was a huge driver for attendance, but Mac had built excitement through grassroots outreach before they had any real success. I can remember my freshman year, our RA came around and told us we'd get free pizza at the games. I grew up an Iowa fan with season tickets to wrestling so I was a huge fan of the Hawkeyes, but attending the games and having that comradery with other students is a core memory of college for me. The pride that I felt when we took down Iowa in the dome the year of our first NCAA trip in over a decade (sorry for the inappropriate signs toward Pierre Pierce, Mr. Hartzell), Brooks hitting 8 3's against Creighton and being Dicky V's diaper dandy of the week, attending the first game in McLeod, attending the MVC tourney and NCAA tourneys... all of those were huge parts of my college experience. It was brilliant by Mac to try to get the dorm kids involved because those are a lot of younger college students, so if you can hook them early, they're going to continue to show up. He always made a point to thank us in some small way and that went a long way to build good will with a group of kids and create buy-in.

The atmosphere has always been a bit stale with our fanbase outside of the students, but Leon Costello and Nate Clayberg (supported by Hartzell) did everything they could to make it fun. Contests for tuition, current songs on the speakers, little things that added to the environment. Clayberg still gives me a hard time about begging him to play Soulja Boy, but that always got the student section excited when we needed it. I made friends with the Delaware mascots when they came for the Flacco game and they came back later that winter to visit and hang out. We took them to a game in the McLeod and they had so much fun because of the environment. Good teams help to get people to games, but we need people who are willing to push the envelope to make it an event when our teams aren't great or we aren't playing a marquee matchup. We aren't going to make money from an entity like the Big Ten Network, so every butt in a seat counts. It probably doesn't help that Creighton and WSU left the conference because those were always must-see games, along with SIU and Bradley not being good for a long time, but I digress.

It is crazy to me that the pep band isn't at every game. That's what I love about the college atmosphere. There is nothing, NOTHING, better than a pep band belting out the fight song during an opposing team's timeout, a drummer on the jumbotron doing a sweet solo, or the mascot doing one-armed pushups to the pep band playing "Enter Sandman" (shout out Zach). I understand they are students, but man it always felt like the pep bands were some of the most invested kids when I was there. I don't understand how we can't find 30-40 students who can play an instrument to be at the games.

It really is sad to see how far our atmosphere has fallen on gameday for our two "major" sports. It definitely goes hand-in-hand with the trajectory of our programs unfortunately. I am sure there are tons of UNI students who go to Iowa City every weekend that might stick around and make UNI what it used to be with a few easy changes. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but there seems to be some low hanging fruit that start with the pep band, exciting intro music, and new arena engagements during dead balls. I hope that one day I can take my daughter to a game that will get her hooked on the UNI experience, but that isn't happening today.

[clenz]

Will they be there tonight or will there be another excuse?

So far, from what I can put together over the years, we have:

1. Can't have them while the football team is playing because of potential overlap
2. Cant have them directly after football season because of the lead up, and week of, finals
3. Then we can't have them between before the third week of January because winter break
4. Cant have them because music majors are the busiest people on the planet, in the history of man kind
but
5. The pep band isn't even music majors, and getting regular students to show up for the thing they volunteered for is impossible because
6. They aren't paid enough to show up for the thing they volunteered to be a part of
7. Somehow the GA/director has no idea when games are even though schedules are set 5-7 months before the season starts, oh and the Valley has played mens conference games (so after every other excuse can be used) exclusively on Tuesday/Wednesday and then Saturday/Sunday and the women, outside of 2 weeks per season, play 95% of their games on Friday/Sunday and if you are home for the Friday you are home Sunday (same for the road.
8. There are too many involved in other performances on campus basically every night of the year, but again, the vast majority of the pep band isn't music majors
9. "You don't show up to every game as a fan, so why should the band show up to every game?"

So essentially they show up Feb-March (20% of the season) and take the free trip to St. Louis and any other post season event. Then when they get told they aren't going, like David did to them, they throw an absolute fit about it AND everyone on here and social media takes their side demanding they go. So we hate them so much that we fight for them to get the free trips to events for teams they don't show up for during the season.


Have I missed anything? I think I caught them all.

We had a damn high school band from an hour and a half away, the day after they played a double header at their school (meaning they weren't done playing until 9 or 10), on a weekend where they didn't even have school the following Monday.

I stand by my comments of drop the pep band full time. Lean fully into the DJ and go with the NBA style environment. Crank the volume on all music, and I mean all music. Get rid of 99% of the old classic rock that gets played. Lean heavily into EDM, modern music with a high driving BPM and bass, modern top 40 mixed in. Genuinely ignore complaints from people over 55 about volume and "back in my day we wouldn't allow this music". Make it an actual sporting environment.

[Panther'73]

women, outside of 2 weeks per season, play 95% of their games on Friday/Sunday and if you are home for the Friday you are home Sunday (same for the road.

actually WBB plays Thursday/Saturday or Friday/Sunday. Only 1 day between games…