pingpong2 said:
My two cents
Most (good) players want to play in the NFL, and most players want an NFL-type experience. I doubt most D1 players at any school could give two hoots about things like tradition. I'd honestly be surprised if the majority of them even know the words to their school's fight song.
My twenty-five cents
I'd bet anything that game music has never been a factor in decisions by any Cal recruit ever.
From the earliest days of the program until relatively recently, the gameday experience was centered around the students, both in the section and the band. You would hear the band play along with the chants of the students and their yell on 3rd down (you'd also be able to hear the people around you). Together with the students-athletes on the field, the whole thing was a production by Cal students. The speakers were only used to provide information.
Now the dominant part of the "gameday experience" is the piped-in music. The band has virtually ceased playing in between snaps and only a few times per game plays anything during stoppages. The band rarely plays anything except Big C and Fight for California during the game anymore, pregame and halftime excluded.
The student section used to be the beating heart of the crowd. They would create noise on first and second down and then hit the next gear on 3rd. They would supply this whenever a game was competitive, no matter whether Cal was good or bad or in-between. Between plays they would do chants. The section is much quieter now. The pre-snap noise for the defense from the students is much lower, especially on 3rd down. The pre-snap electronic noise drowns them out, almost smothering the atmosphere.
Although competitive reasons are not what motivates me to complain about the pre-snap noise, I do think it costs the defense more than it gets them in the long run. Yes, the defense benefits from any noise pre-snap since it makes communication harder for the offense but the psychological effect is better with noise produced from human voices.. Nothing beats the emotional synergy the crowd and the defense experience together when the crowd yells its lungs dry pre-snap and the defense responds with a key play. Nothing else supplies the feeling that the team and its fans have won together.
The plasticization of the gameday experience is part of the soulless professionalization of every aspect of the sport. College football used to be about student-athletics, tradition and school spirit. Yes, it's always been about making money too, but the commercial aspect did not overwhelm the symbolic ones as it now does. Notably, there's nothing money making about the piped-in music. Cal doesn't make one cent of profit from it. It's more likely to lose them fans than gain them. They only do it because the gameday experience is now programmed via corporate groupthink. Every other professional sports game day management team floods the air with piped-in music and electronic noise so it must be profitable.
There's nothing Cal can do about the conference realignment, the death of the bowls (especially the Rose Bowl), the destruction of hundred year old annual rivalry games, or the extreme roster turnover which makes a mockery out of student-athletics, but Cal can control its own game day audio program. All it has to do is dial back the piped-in music by 75% and stop blasting the electronic noise presnap on defense (at least not when the game is competitive; if the crowd has given up then ok). This remedy won't cost them a cent and will dramatically improve the atmosphere at games.