The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/144506
to respond to appeals. Now, it's firstcome, first served, and motivated freshmen have just as good a shot as seniors at prime seats. The bottom line is, Michigan wants a sizable and enthusiastic student representation when the Wolverines burst from the stadium tunnel before games. "It's important to our coaches," Brandon said. "It's important to our student-athletes. It's important to the rest of the fans in the stadium. We traveled around the country talking to people who have been dealing with this problem. It's not just a Michigan problem. "Not everybody is having the problem, but most people are, with student sections that are starting to be half empty. People come in during the game, and, in some cases, by the end of the game there are still a lot of empty seats. We have too many people who want those seats and deserve those seats to have them sit empty. "We want our students to be there, because they've become such an important part of the game atmosphere. We want them to have a great time. We want the game-day experience to be special for them, but we don't want all of the other activities around the game day to become a higher priority than being in their seat and cheering for the team when they bust out of the tunnel to represent Michigan." Brandon hopes the early-arrival incentives work and that more doesn't need to be done. He knows one thing — the situation couldn't continue like it was. "Hopefully, it will be a big improvement over last year, because certainly last year was incredibly disappointing," he said. "It created a situation where we just had to make some changes." Bigger changes are coming, when Rutgers and Maryland join the Big Ten next season. Those two schools join Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State and Indiana in forming the conference's East Division. The schools definitely provide an opportunity for football-fixated alums to the east to watch their favorite team, but Brandon likes the breadth of sports challenges the newest entrants bring. There's no question, he added, that the two schools expand the Big Ten's footprint. "They bring important new geography to the conference, that was somewhat landlocked and not growing from a population base perspective," he offered. "They take us into geographies where there are high densities of people. They take us into areas where there are a lot of recruiting activities, which will be helpful. "They allow us to connect with more of our alums. We have an enormous number of alums in the Washington-Baltimore area, and certainly on the East Coast. Their opportunity to see our teams travel occasionally into those areas and participate is going to be a wonderful thing." As for the realigned football divisions, there's no perfect solution, Brandon cautioned. His general rule of thumb is that when everybody's unhappy, the powers that be must be doing something right.