Many of the non international students look and sound like their international cousins. Some cultures just don't value concussions.

Life and what it means has changed...

There have been great shifts in human perspectives and understand some positive some negative

OaktownBear said:

---

It's up to Cal to figure out a way to market it's revenue sports. Frankly, if today's students would rather join the hiking club, or kayak, or do online gaming, fine by me. It's their lives.

---

The problem with this laissez-faire attitude is that student engagement affects us all. More students = more excitement, which enriches *my* game day experience, attracts recruits, and engages a national audience. So it behooves us all to get student butts in the seats.

My background:

I was a student during the Mike White years. Attended virtually every home game from my sophomore year on -- I didn't realize Cal had a football team until after I got on campus as a freshman, so it took me a while.

I'd agree that student attendance has always varied wildly, and has always correlated to the quality of the team and the opponent.

Let's face facts in an old fashioned way - the stark truth. The majority of students are women they don't go to football games as frequently as men do. Most men on campus did not grow up playing football or have a friend in hs who played football, so they are not attendees in hs or college, many are from overseas or out of state. The football fanatic student-fans are at an all-time low. It is simple demographics.

JSC 76 said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

It's up to Cal to figure out a way to market it's revenue sports. Frankly, if today's students would rather join the hiking club, or kayak, or do online gaming, fine by me. It's their lives.

---

The problem with this laissez-faire attitude is that student engagement affects us all. More students = more excitement, which enriches *my* game day experience, attracts recruits, and engages a national audience. So it behooves us all to get student butts in the seats.

My background:

I was a student during the Mike White years. Attended virtually every home game from my sophomore year on -- I didn't realize Cal had a football team until after I got on campus as a freshman, so it took me a while.

I'd agree that student attendance has always varied wildly, and has always correlated to the quality of the team and the opponent.

---

I'm not taking a laissez-faire attitude. Cal should be doing everything they can to engage students, convince them that football is a great experience and sell their product. I'm just saying that is up to Cal. It is not a moral failing of a generation if they like to do or don't like to do the same things previous generations did. I'm happy to tell students how much fun I had in the student section, but it is up to them if they want to do it.

Telling they are supposed to go and insulting their whole generation if they don't is not a great marketing plan, as much as some here would like Cal to adopt the slogan "Stop being snowflakes and go to the damned games because I said so."

I attended almost every game from age of 5 to 35, by the way.

Barttoriv74 said:

---

CaliforniaEternal said:

---

GoCal80 said:

---

Yesterday was move-in day for the dorms at Cal and the football team was there greeting students and helping them move into their rooms to try to drum up attendance at games.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/collegesports/article/Cal-football-players-trying-to-get-peers-to-go-to-13156356.php

Back when I was a student in the 70s students arrived early for games to get good seats and the student section was always packed. Now football games are less well attended by students and they seem to mostly arrive after the kickoff, sometime during the first quarter. I've pondered why there is less interest these days by students but am not really sure I understand the reasons. Winning and having exciting "star" players would help get some students back, but I suspect there is more going on - perhaps there is more stress related to competition for jobs and positions in graduate programs and students are less willing to spend an entire afternoon/evening at a game?

---

I'm not sure why you think student attendance was higher in the 70s. When you look at pictures or videos from old games, from the mid-60's on, the student section is rarely full except for the Big Game.

It doesn't take long to figure out why student attendance has been declining and there are multiple reasons.

The big one is the program has been awful now for close to a decade. From 2004-2007, the student section was packed because the team was good and it built upon multiple successful seasons to generate interest.

Of course there are other reasons too like more international students who don't have any knowledge of football (have we seen any effort to bring in these potential fans?), lack of upgrades to the student section (porta-potties, no concourse built under the east side for concessions, no beer sales, bad wireless signal/no wifi, etc...)

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

The other thing is that it was extremely common until the 1990's for alums, especially younger ones to either get students to buy student tickets for them or to move into the rooting section with their regular tickets. The young alumni tickets were a wink to alums who had been going to games on student AP cards once Cal tied getting into the stadium to a picture ID. They knew young alums would sit in the rooting section, they just wanted them to pay something approaching full fare for the ticket. My first year, I sat with the same group of guys in the rooting section every game and they were alums in their thirties.

Simple Demographics. Well, the power 5 conferences all fund their athletic programs on football and its related revenues/activities.When will the demographics that have been highlighted here hit all of the power 5 conferences? Will the 5 power conferences and the rest of D-1 colleges have to get out of the big time entertainment business since what we have is unsustainable? Right now, the older fan and more importantly the big time donors (also older) prop up the budgets of the athletic budgets. Pick a time period, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years and will it all come crashing down? It might. The world of college athletics developed organically from small beginnings in the late 1800s, went big time with big stadiums and then blew up into what is it now based on TV. The TV market has its own problems. Filling stadiums is another problem.

FYI...it's not just Cal. The SEC and 'Bama have attendance issues. Look if Alabama has trouble getting students to attend (how many NT have they won recently) then it's bigger than Cal or Alabama football. Clearly winning doesn't solve all.

How does SEC, LSU solve their attendance issues? Well, it's complicated...

Alabama Crimson Tide Gets Creative in Tackling Declining Student Attendance

Barttoriv74 said:

---

CaliforniaEternal said:

---

GoCal80 said:

---

Yesterday was move-in day for the dorms at Cal and the football team was there greeting students and helping them move into their rooms to try to drum up attendance at games.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/collegesports/article/Cal-football-players-trying-to-get-peers-to-go-to-13156356.php

Back when I was a student in the 70s students arrived early for games to get good seats and the student section was always packed. Now football games are less well attended by students and they seem to mostly arrive after the kickoff, sometime during the first quarter. I've pondered why there is less interest these days by students but am not really sure I understand the reasons. Winning and having exciting "star" players would help get some students back, but I suspect there is more going on - perhaps there is more stress related to competition for jobs and positions in graduate programs and students are less willing to spend an entire afternoon/evening at a game?

---

I'm not sure why you think student attendance was higher in the 70s. When you look at pictures or videos from old games, from the mid-60's on, the student section is rarely full except for the Big Game.

It doesn't take long to figure out why student attendance has been declining and there are multiple reasons.

The big one is the program has been awful now for close to a decade. From 2004-2007, the student section was packed because the team was good and it built upon multiple successful seasons to generate interest.

Of course there are other reasons too like more international students who don't have any knowledge of football (have we seen any effort to bring in these potential fans?), lack of upgrades to the student section (porta-potties, no concourse built under the east side for concessions, no beer sales, bad wireless signal/no wifi, etc...)

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

As for romanticizing the past, I am one of the first who would plead guilty to that. But romanticizing is just making a subjective judgment or forming an opinion, and it does not mean the facts are always wrong or exaggerated or minimized.

My dad took me to my first Cal game in 1947, when I was five. That was a Rose Bowl Year, and so were the next two years. It was very exciting, and I was much more interested in the halftime show with Cal students driving covered wagons around the field, chased by Stanford students dressed up as ferocious Indians (my apologies to the PC crowd). One important thing to note is that the capacity of Memorial Stadium was more than 80,000 in those days, because there was temporary bleacher seating of another 25-30 rows along the eastern rim of the stadium, which included the top of the Cal rooting section. Today, capacity is 62,000, and I'd guess the rooting section has at least 25% fewer seats than it did in the years before the 2012 renovation.

We continued going to Cal games together, until I got to high school, where for three years I was an usher in the section just south of the Cal rooting section. That section was rarely full, as those were mostly losing years, except for 1958, when Cal went to the Rose Bowl again.

In the seasons that I attended Cal, 1959-1964, we won 13 games over six years, an average of about 2 games per year. I went to every single home game and all the Big Games. It was the first time that I paid attention to how full the rooting section was, because I needed to find an empty seat in it where I could sit. Prior to that, when I went with my dad, he got the tickets. When I ushered games while in high school, my usher responsibilities ended at halftime, and I could go and sit wherever I wanted, and much of the stadium was empty. Crowds were maybe 30-35,000. While I was at Cal, I always sat in the rooting section. We all wore white shirts, because the yell leaders needed that for our card stunts. We threw cards. We bought Gremlins and threw the caps, until someone got hurt and they were banned. We rolled girls who made the mistake of wearing a red sweater, from fan to fan up and down the rooting section.

In the years I attended Cal, those Cal rooting sections were full to overflowing, and that is a fact. Those seats were desirable, in order to get in on the fun, no matter how the team was playing. We laughed, we cheered, we booed, and we were naughty, and we all got to the stadium early to make sure we got a seat in the rooting section. It was just part of the Cal experience for us. I left nearly every Cal game feeling bad because we lost, and kicking myself for not spending Saturday doing something more worthwhile. And the next Saturday, of course I returned to do it again. I am one who thinks one should have some fun, away from the intense and mostly introverted activity of studying in college. Learning to socialize and enjoy fellow students, and above all, take some time to smell the flowers.

CAL6371 said:

---

Let's face facts in an old fashioned way - the stark truth. The majority of students are women they don't go to football games as frequently as men do. Most men on campus did not grow up playing football or have a friend in hs who played football, so they are not attendees in hs or college, many are from overseas or out of state. The football fanatic student-fans are at an all-time low. It is simple demographics.

---

My wife attended essentially every football game even though Furd's teams's sucked, as did her female friends. Why? She said it was something coeds did, and they even planned for it. Yes it provided an opportunity to meet guys, but also there were other social aspects to it (or so she tells me). She did admit the women often didn't know the score. The ironic part of this is if you go to games, there are plenty of serious women Cal football fans.

The one thing we noticed recently is that instead of the jeans and tee shirt my wife used to wear, most coeds going to games seem to dress-up and hit the make-up. We are not sure what to make of all that, though at our age, we are fairly clueless.

SFCityBear said:

---

Barttoriv74 said:

---

CaliforniaEternal said:

---

GoCal80 said:

---

Yesterday was move-in day for the dorms at Cal and the football team was there greeting students and helping them move into their rooms to try to drum up attendance at games.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/collegesports/article/Cal-football-players-trying-to-get-peers-to-go-to-13156356.php

Back when I was a student in the 70s students arrived early for games to get good seats and the student section was always packed. Now football games are less well attended by students and they seem to mostly arrive after the kickoff, sometime during the first quarter. I've pondered why there is less interest these days by students but am not really sure I understand the reasons. Winning and having exciting "star" players would help get some students back, but I suspect there is more going on - perhaps there is more stress related to competition for jobs and positions in graduate programs and students are less willing to spend an entire afternoon/evening at a game?

---

I'm not sure why you think student attendance was higher in the 70s. When you look at pictures or videos from old games, from the mid-60's on, the student section is rarely full except for the Big Game.

It doesn't take long to figure out why student attendance has been declining and there are multiple reasons.

The big one is the program has been awful now for close to a decade. From 2004-2007, the student section was packed because the team was good and it built upon multiple successful seasons to generate interest.

Of course there are other reasons too like more international students who don't have any knowledge of football (have we seen any effort to bring in these potential fans?), lack of upgrades to the student section (porta-potties, no concourse built under the east side for concessions, no beer sales, bad wireless signal/no wifi, etc...)

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

As for romanticizing the past, I am one of the first who would plead guilty to that. But romanticizing is just making a subjective judgment or forming an opinion, and it does not mean the facts are always wrong or exaggerated or minimized.

My dad took me to my first Cal game in 1947, when I was five. That was a Rose Bowl Year, and so were the next two years. It was very exciting, and I was much more interested in the halftime show with Cal students driving covered wagons around the field, chased by Stanford students dressed up as ferocious Indians (my apologies to the PC crowd). One important thing to note is that the capacity of Memorial Stadium was more than 80,000 in those days, because there was temporary bleacher seating of another 25-30 rows along the eastern rim of the stadium, which included the top of the Cal rooting section. Today, capacity is 62,000, and I'd guess the rooting section has at least 25% fewer seats than it did in the years before the 2012 renovation.

We continued going to Cal games together, until I got to high school, where for three years I was an usher in the section just south of the Cal rooting section. That section was rarely full, as those were mostly losing years, except for 1958, when Cal went to the Rose Bowl again.

In the seasons that I attended Cal, 1959-1964, we won 13 games over six years, an average of about 2 games per year. I went to every single home game and all the Big Games. It was the first time that I paid attention to how full the rooting section was, because I needed to find an empty seat in it where I could sit. Prior to that, when I went with my dad, he got the tickets. When I ushered games while in high school, my usher responsibilities ended at halftime, and I could go and sit wherever I wanted, and much of the stadium was empty. Crowds were maybe 30-35,000. While I was at Cal, I always sat in the rooting section. We all wore white shirts, because the yell leaders needed that for our card stunts. We threw cards. We bought Gremlins and threw the caps, until someone got hurt and they were banned. We rolled girls who made the mistake of wearing a red sweater, from fan to fan up and down the rooting section.

In the years I attended Cal, those Cal rooting sections were full to overflowing, and that is a fact. Those seats were desirable, in order to get in on the fun, no matter how the team was playing. We laughed, we cheered, we booed, and we were naughty, and we all got to the stadium early to make sure we got a seat in the rooting section. It was just part of the Cal experience for us. I left nearly every Cal game feeling bad because we lost, and kicking myself for not spending Saturday doing something more worthwhile. And the next Saturday, of course I returned to do it again. I am one who thinks one should have some fun, away from the intense and mostly introverted activity of studying in college. Learning to socialize and enjoy fellow students, and above all, take some time to smell the flowers.

---

I get your last paragraph, and it was the same when I went to Cal and the rooting section was overflowing (also note we had mostly a wining team due to Mike White and the talent he left) but with all the zero tolerance rules I don't think the environment is the same. It seems like the PC police have taken all the fun out of college. Students seem much more serious than when I attended.

My dad used to tell this story of when he was at Cal in the early 1930s: He and his fellow architect students would spend Saturday morning in the Arc building, studying or working on projects. Before noon, they would all head up to Memorial for the game. One student, Hachi, would remain at his drawing board, working, and criticize them for going to games, wasting time when they could be studying. After the game, they all returned to the Arc, and there was Hachi working diligently on a project. He then proceeded to tell them all about the game and what had happened in it. There was no TV, no radio. My dad and his friends all figured that Hachi had left the Arc after they had gone, rushed up to the game, and before the game ended, had rushed back to the Arc, to make it appear like he had been studying, all game long. They couldn't prove it, and Hachi never admitted it, and whenever they got together years later, the subject always came up, with laughter all around.

It was always important to look cool. In my day, the coolest guys looked smart, and looked like they didn't have to study. They carried one book, at the most. The nerds of the day carried a briefcase full of books and usually had a slide rule dangling from their belt. Today, kids in the first grade are hunched over carrying a backpack full of homework, which their parents end up helping them with anyway. That to me, is tragic.

I don't know what is cool today. Having your head buried in a cell phone, perhaps. Now that looks nerdy to me. What exactly do those kids do for fun? A video game, I guess.

BTW, there used to be a streetcar that ran on tracks up the hill on Hearst Ave. What my dad and Hachi and the rest of the architecture students did for fun was to grease those tracks, so the streetcar wheels would slip and slip, which kept the streetcar from climbing up the hill. The culprits were never found. And many of those students grew up to be the most successful architects in the Bay Area.

Thanks for the great history, SFCB! I am looking forward to your hoop analysis this coming season.

Another Bear said:

---

FYI...it's not just Cal. The SEC and 'Bama have attendance issues. Look if Alabama has trouble getting students to attend (how many NT have they won recently) then it's bigger than Cal or Alabama football. Clearly winning doesn't solve all.

How does SEC, LSU solve their attendance issues? Well, it's complicated...

Alabama Crimson Tide Gets Creative in Tackling Declining Student Attendance

---

It's the huge influx of Asian and International students at Alabama. (sarcasm)

If Cal wants to fill the student section it will mimic the de facto policy of years gone by. Expand the student section by a few sections, make it all general seating, sell season tickets in the equivalent number of the expanded sections to non-students. Alums will fill in the gaps in the rooting section AS THEY HISTORICALLY ALWAYS DID. Late arriving students can spill over into the new sections next to the student section if need by, AS THEY HISTORICALLY ALWAYS DID. You'll have a full student section and a couple empty sections on either side, AS WE HISTORICALLY ALWAYS DID. A louder student section bolstered by young alums will make things more fun for students and attract more to the games. Young alums getting to the game early, or at least on time will take the prime seats thus encouraging students to arrive earlier to get a good seat.

This is how it worked when I was a student. And yes, chill out on the enforcement unless someone is obviously drunk or disorderly.

wifeisafurd said:

---

CAL6371 said:

---

Let's face facts in an old fashioned way - the stark truth. The majority of students are women they don't go to football games as frequently as men do. Most men on campus did not grow up playing football or have a friend in hs who played football, so they are not attendees in hs or college, many are from overseas or out of state. The football fanatic student-fans are at an all-time low. It is simple demographics.

---

My wife attended essentially every football game even though Furd's teams's sucked, as did her female friends. Why? She said it was something coeds did, and they even planned for it. Yes it provided an opportunity to meet guys, but also there were other social aspects to it (or so she tells me). She did admit the women often didn't know the score. The ironic part of this is if you go to games, there are plenty of serious women Cal football fans.

The one thing we noticed recently is that instead of the jeans and tee shirt my wife used to wear, most coeds going to games seem to dress-up and hit the make-up. We are not sure what to make of all that, though at our age, we are fairly clueless.

---

When I was an undergrad at Cal, I dated a Furd co-ed for about a year. However, she wasn't nearly as much fun as it sounds like your wife's female friends were. Just my luck...

SFCityBear said:

---

.... Having your head buried in a cell phone, perhaps. Now that looks nerdy to me. ...

---

I would use other words to describe what it looks like when you are doing it every few minutes while sitting in $1000+ seats at an NBA Championship Series Game.

Barttoriv74 said:

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

Back in my day, we packed the house, pre-TV, pre-everything. Oski was there, he was only 6 years old.

oskirules said:

---

Barttoriv74 said:

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

Back in my day, we packed the house, pre-TV, pre-everything. Oski was there, he was only 6 years old.

---

Ah, the good old days!

I dont know. I have a video of when I was in the band in 1969 against usc. Nobody was in the stands

oskirules said:

---

Barttoriv74 said:

---

Exactly, people have selective memories. Student attendance in the 60's, 70's and 80's was very often very low. The folks that remember differently have romanticized the past.

---

Back in my day, we packed the house, pre-TV, pre-everything. Oski was there, he was only 6 years old.

---

Pictures don't lie, pre-Photoshop, and that looks like games I went to as a kid, when Jackie Jensen and Johnny O were packing the pigskin for the Bears. Stanford, USC, and UCLA games were always sellouts with 80,000 in the stands. I was wrong when I wrote that the bleacher seats on the East Rim were 25-30 rows high. From the photo, they look like about 10-12 rows at most. I took some measurements off the photo, I figure the rooting section to be about 12,000 seats. Looking at a map of today's stadium, the rooting section looks like less than 6,000 seats. Just an estimate.

*****THIS IS FOOTAGE OF MY FIRST CAL FOOTBALL GAME*****


Look at how well-dressed we were. Look at how much we paid attention. We didn't need distractions of the music that you young whippersnappers listen to, like Bing Crosby or Taylor Swift or Drake.

Hey...you kids GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

OaktownBear said:

---

bearister said:

---

CalBearinLA said:

---

It's easy to hate on millenials, as a fair number of people here want to do...but my sister is currently a sophomore at Cal and simply doesn't have the time to attend sporting events. She locked down volunteer jobs and internships during her freshman year, which is something I'm sure most of you Old Blues did not do in the 70's and 80's. Say what you want about them not being able to wake up at 12:30 or such, but a good number of them do hustle and are more career driven. Money is also a big issue, so free tickets would definitely help. The current times are not like when most of you were in college, when gasoline cost under 50 cents.

---

---

Thank you, bearister. You perfectly captured my feelings every time I hear yet another self centered old boomer complain because the world has passed them by and millennials don't want to live their lives exactly like boomers did (or claim they did)

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Cal8285 said:

---

golden sloth said:

---

For the record, student attendance at games isn't a 'Cal' issue, this is a nation-wide issue and impacts everyone from Alabama to Michigan to Little Sisters of the Poor.

---

And a lot of it has to do with the third rail that 71Bear raised. Kids don't grow up going to games as much as they used to. A lot of factors in that, some mentioned in this thread, some not, but it is the way it is.

It is a good idea to live into that reality and do things like have players connecting personally with students, so good for the coaching staff in getting the players to do that.

---

I'd also point out that Cal eliminated the Family Section in the mid 2000's. Reap what you sow.

---

familysection said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Cal8285 said:

---

golden sloth said:

---

For the record, student attendance at games isn't a 'Cal' issue, this is a nation-wide issue and impacts everyone from Alabama to Michigan to Little Sisters of the Poor.

---

And a lot of it has to do with the third rail that 71Bear raised. Kids don't grow up going to games as much as they used to. A lot of factors in that, some mentioned in this thread, some not, but it is the way it is.

It is a good idea to live into that reality and do things like have players connecting personally with students, so good for the coaching staff in getting the players to do that.

---

I'd also point out that Cal eliminated the Family Section in the mid 2000's. Reap what you sow.

---

---

Recently the Oakland A's are experimenting with something similar to Cal's former Family Section. Very low priced season tickets in the Bleachers not tied to any specific seats. This is to allow the season ticket holders to mix and mingle with friends and family.

PtownBear1 said:

---

Because millenials are lame. From my experience, they generally don't like sports, being outside, or spending money.

---

+10,000,000.

SFCityBear said:

---

My dad used to tell this story of when he was at Cal in the early 1930s: He and his fellow architect students would spend Saturday morning in the Arc building, studying or working on projects. Before noon, they would all head up to Memorial for the game. One student, Hachi, would remain at his drawing board, working, and criticize them for going to games, wasting time when they could be studying. After the game, they all returned to the Arc, and there was Hachi working diligently on a project. He then proceeded to tell them all about the game and what had happened in it. There was no TV, no radio. My dad and his friends all figured that Hachi had left the Arc after they had gone, rushed up to the game, and before the game ended, had rushed back to the Arc, to make it appear like he had been studying, all game long. They couldn't prove it, and Hachi never admitted it, and whenever they got together years later, the subject always came up, with laughter all around.

It was always important to look cool. In my day, the coolest guys looked smart, and looked like they didn't have to study. They carried one book, at the most. The nerds of the day carried a briefcase full of books and usually had a slide rule dangling from their belt. Today, kids in the first grade are hunched over carrying a backpack full of homework, which their parents end up helping them with anyway. That to me, is tragic.

I don't know what is cool today. Having your head buried in a cell phone, perhaps. Now that looks nerdy to me. What exactly do those kids do for fun? A video game, I guess.

BTW, there used to be a streetcar that ran on tracks up the hill on Hearst Ave. What my dad and Hachi and the rest of the architecture students did for fun was to grease those tracks, so the streetcar wheels would slip and slip, which kept the streetcar from climbing up the hill. The culprits were never found. And many of those students grew up to be the most successful architects in the Bay Area.

---

Have you seen this old footage (1906) of the streetcar going up Hearst? 1906 Streetcar Video

Very cool. Grainy but once the train turns the corner and heads up Hearst eastward, it looks familiar.

I agree, very cool video! Familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. I laughed out loud when the train stopped and they had to wrestle with the pedestrian that refused to get out of the way of the train. Also was a bit shocking to see part of the campus bordered with a white picket fence.

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

I agree, very cool video! Familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. I laughed out loud when the train stopped and they had to wrestle with the pedestrian that refused to get out of the way of the train.

---

Seriously, what was that guy's deal? And some fat dude runs up the street to break up the fight, and then winds up . . . getting on the streetcar? What was that about?

oskidunker said:

---

I dont know. I have a video of when I was in the band in 1969 against usc. Nobody was in the stands

---

USC sucked back then too.

MSaviolives said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

My dad used to tell this story of when he was at Cal in the early 1930s: He and his fellow architect students would spend Saturday morning in the Arc building, studying or working on projects. Before noon, they would all head up to Memorial for the game. One student, Hachi, would remain at his drawing board, working, and criticize them for going to games, wasting time when they could be studying. After the game, they all returned to the Arc, and there was Hachi working diligently on a project. He then proceeded to tell them all about the game and what had happened in it. There was no TV, no radio. My dad and his friends all figured that Hachi had left the Arc after they had gone, rushed up to the game, and before the game ended, had rushed back to the Arc, to make it appear like he had been studying, all game long. They couldn't prove it, and Hachi never admitted it, and whenever they got together years later, the subject always came up, with laughter all around.

It was always important to look cool. In my day, the coolest guys looked smart, and looked like they didn't have to study. They carried one book, at the most. The nerds of the day carried a briefcase full of books and usually had a slide rule dangling from their belt. Today, kids in the first grade are hunched over carrying a backpack full of homework, which their parents end up helping them with anyway. That to me, is tragic.

I don't know what is cool today. Having your head buried in a cell phone, perhaps. Now that looks nerdy to me. What exactly do those kids do for fun? A video game, I guess.

BTW, there used to be a streetcar that ran on tracks up the hill on Hearst Ave. What my dad and Hachi and the rest of the architecture students did for fun was to grease those tracks, so the streetcar wheels would slip and slip, which kept the streetcar from climbing up the hill. The culprits were never found. And many of those students grew up to be the most successful architects in the Bay Area.

---

Have you seen this old footage (1906) of the streetcar going up Hearst? 1906 Streetcar Video

---

MSaviolives,

No I hadn't see it. Thanks so much for posting it. I forwarded the link to Hachi's son, John, another Cal alum and Cal fan, and a former member of the Cal Marching Band and Cal Straw Hat Band. When he and I get together, we still argue about whose father greased those streetcar tracks on Hearst. I am certain that it was Hachi who greased those tracks, because my father was always either working, studying, or attending a Cal game. Or so he said.

SFCityBear

Maybe a lot of them have to work to offset student loans/ afford trips home/ ability to get by through the summer?

GivemTheAxe said:

---

ColoradoBear said:

---

bearsandgiants said:

---

You put a good team on the field, and start games at 12:30 on Saturdays, and you have no problem packing the student section. Neither of these has been the case in a long, long time.

---

Have to guess 2x the number of students would be there at kick (and far more overall) for a 3-4pm start as opposed to a 1230pm start. It's the old guys who like 1230pm starts.

---

Times and days of games vary too much to make any long range plans. In the good old days we knew that all home games were at 1pm (later 12:30 pm) on Saturdays.
As a student You could plan what time to tailgate before and after the game what time to arrive at CMS. What time to plan for dinner (usually on or around campus).
Now no plans can be made until the week before the game. Or at best 2 weeks before the game.
And often the game time precludes post game activities

Overall IMO predictably is more important than start time (assuming no start later than 3 pm)

---

I had dinner last night with a Cal fan, and we got around to discussing this topic. He would have agreed with you about predictability of start times. He felt it would be especially important for young to middle age alumni with families, lots of responsibilities and very busy lives. They really need to be able to plan ahead to fit a game into their schedule. I meet a few times a year with my high school class reunion committee, and when we try to plan for the next meeting six months in the future, we all pull out our phones to check calendars, and usually 80% of us already have all the available days in that month booked. Several of the members are almost fully booked a year in advance. Some of them are Cal grads, former season ticket holders, who don't go to games any more, because they don't knowall the starting times at the start of the season.

My friend also said he feels it is the PAC12 Network which started this, when they saw all the money they could make by juggling game starting times to get more games on TV. He said there is very little else for fans to watch on the PAC12 network, except talk shows and reruns of old games, and he expects the PAC12 network to fail within a few seasons, and then perhaps Cal and all schools can get back to setting starting times way ahead of games, so we all can plan our lives to attend some games.

I hope so. But the program may die without the money