I think people who don't count their net worth in the $10's of millions can often despair over their ability to directly impact the program they love. They want to make a difference. They make hundreds (thousands) of posts online about what should change and why and they spend a disproportionate amount of their free time reading, watching videos and obsessing over Cal football. And yet I think it's easy for them to feel as if they are little more than passengers on the world's most unpleasant roller coaster. Well here's a chance to shake off those shackles of perceived impotence and for EVERYONE to truly make a difference.
On Saturday we play the Wagner Seahawks at 12:30 PM. I greatly respect the Seahawks willingness to play us and look forward to welcoming they and their fans to Memorial. But this is not a good football team, even by FCS standards, and if this game is in doubt at the end of the first quarter then we have serious and unexpected issues. But we nevertheless need our fans to attend this game. Lots and lots of our fans.
As I mentioned, our home attendance for UCLA was great. Highest attended game in a decade. But our TV viewership for that one was surprisingly bad. 1.089m. For a sell-out this TV number was frankly shockingly low. And I doubt our Syracuse game helped our case much either. So the questions remain (despite the impressive job our marketing team did in getting people to show up for UCLA) as to whether enough people really care about Cal football to justify moving us through in the next round of realignment.
The ONLY way to answer that question is by packing our stadium for each and every game from this point forward, and yes that includes even when we play an FCS team.
Every season ticket holder has been offered up to four free tickets for the Wagner game. There will be a completely FREE concert by Train in Memorial after the game. Train is a reasonably famous local band and they absolutely do NOT need to be doing this to find fans (Drops of Jupiter and Soul Sister were pretty massive hits). But they are fans of the team (founder's brother-in-law played for Cal in the Sonny Dykes years) and are doing this to help out the program. Plus I think they were touched that we feature their song Save Me San Francisco in our games (see there sometimes is a method to the madness . . . ). We have cool giveaways for the students (some upside down "Bay Area" hat thing?) and a bunch of other bells and whistles. Now it's up to our fans to show up.
This is the chance for the non-gazillionaires among us to do their part to support the players, the team and the program. We need fans. We need to show the networks that even when playing a non-marquee program Cal can draw people to the stadium on a beautiful fall Saturday for a 12:30 pm kick-off.
If you hate night games, we need you to show up. If you enjoy hanging out on campus with perfect weather, we need you to show up. If you love Cal and want a better football program, we need you to show up. If you are happy that Cal has a new football coach and a new direction, we need you to show up. If you want to see a QB, who is arguably the most talented player to ever play that position while wearing the blue and gold, we need you to show up. In short, we need all of you to show up.
If you want a better football program, this is how you can make a difference. Please come and bring as many of your friends and family with you as you can. There are only six home games a year. Don't let one of them slip through your fingers.
