CautiouslyPessimisticBear said:
Long-time poster using a different account so I can get real for a moment.
I attended my first Cal basketball game of this season tonight. Observations:
1). Less than 3 minutes after the game ended, when the band had just started playing its first post-game song, I was asked to get up and leave Haas by a security guard who was clearing out the crowd. The teams were literally still on the court shaking hands and security was trying to shoo me out the door. I rather coldly told security woman that I enjoy listening to the band's post game songs and I waved her off. About two minutes later, when the band was playing their second post game song (this is only about five minutes after the final bell), security man comes up to me and asks me to leave the arena. At this point, I'm pretty pissed off, and I explained to security man that I was going to listen to the ****ing band play a few songs whether he liked it or not. At that point, my fun, relaxing experience was pretty much ruined, my blood pressure was up, and I couldn't enjoy the band's third song (which was, I believe, Hail to California) as I had two security idiots glaring at me. Knowlton, are you listening? For what I pay for a ticket, I can't relax after the game for 10-15 minutes without being hassled by your GD security theater people? Wow. Maybe this is just a business, nothing else...just whisk the paying folks out the door as quickly as possible. What a crappy business model.
2). There were few enough people at the game that I actually attempted to count the crowd. I'd guess maybe 1,100. Depressing. Average age was about 55, with virtually no families or young kids. Dead silent environment until the crowd rallied with about one minute left in the game. I grew up in the Kidd/Abdur-Rahim era, and we've had some good teams since then as well. All I can say is Cal is doing something very wrong, and may never recover from Williams/Jones. Haas is a kinda sad place these days.
3). They've draped the big "California" banner below the American flag, where it rests on a platform and partially covers the names of Cal men's and women's teams that are painted on a platform. It looks sloppy, like no-one running the facility really gives a ***** And very noticeable in the sterile, plain rafters of the arena is the lack of the championship banners and retired player jerseys that used to hang proudly, items that would restore some character to the place. It is such a no-brainer that they should be hung back up it just depresses me that nobody at Cal seems to care.
4). Each corner of the scoreboard shows the players' numbers and their stats. Yet, when a Cal player scores and is running back up the court, that is EXACTLY when I always (used to) take a quick glance to see how many points that player has. However, the genius that runs the scoreboard has chosen to grey-out those corner stat boards with a grey "Cal" logo that lasts for about 10 seconds right after anybody scores, just long enough to ruin the purpose of the stats board. Nice work, fella.
5). We have a problem with many different shades of yellow/gold going on. Most noticeable is the "Make More Noise" thing that flashes on the main scoreboard. It is a very bright shade of yellow that is completely wrong for Cal and again, it makes you shake your head and wonder if the person running the place gives a *****
6). Credit to the Cal band for bringing much needed energy tonight. They're a huge part of the reason I still go to games. That said, the fact that they can't start playing Immediately upon a break in the action but instead have to wait with their thumbs up their asses while we all stare at screen time on the scoreboard (like any of us needs more screen time) while Cal and idiot Learfield remind us who is on the seemingly endless list of "game day sponsors" is depressing. Any spontaneity and momentum has been stripped from the game day experience. And, on a side note, I'm a bit surprised to see how much red is tolerated in the band, from a solid red Santa hand puppet someone was holding to red buttons on the vests to red hat decorations. Smh.
7). 8pm games suck. I got home to the Danville area via BART and parking at Orinda BART at 11:300pm. It's no wonder there's no families or young kids at the game. Who wants to get home at 11:30?
8). Sorry to be so negative. It's just I am having trouble reconciling two-plus decades of fun, sometimes elite basketball that I've enjoyed at Harmon/Haas that I was brought up on with what I saw out there tonight. The team has two legitimate players on it: Bradley and Harris-Dyson. That's it. I'll stop there as there's no point in denigrating the players. But if Fox can't recruit more fun, athletic players, this ain't gonna change, folks. This board can claim that "stars don't matter" all it wants but that's simply wrong.
I'll stop now. But a warning to Knowlton: tell your security folks to give people 15 minutes to bask in a win (or loss). If you don't fix that, I might never be back. And my name is on the GD wall of Haas as a (minor) donor.
Go Bears.
Cautious:
I am dismayed at the response of some here to your post. It is symptomatic of a big problem with Cal athletics. For some people the athletic event is about the game and eff all the people who maybe enjoy other elements. And since Sandy, that has been the attitude of the Cal athletic department, I suspect out of ignorance. This is why, while ambivalent about Sandy, I think her reign was a disaster. She completely sanitized Cal athletics of anything Cal and had no understanding of any of the different constituents at the games and made no effort to try.
I'm going to tell my mother's story here. Her father went to Cal and it was a huge source of family pride. My parents had season tickets for decades in the family section because that was what they could afford. My mom loved the Cal band above all else. Cal football was also very important to her, but it was secondary to the band. The football team could be terrible, and if they were, she'd definitely complain and be as bitter about as any of us, but as long as there was the Cal band, she was there.
For 30 years of my life game day went as follows. You show up at Sproul for the pregame concert. When they finish on the steps you run as fast as you can through Sather gate to watch the band march through. You follow the band up through campus stopping at every stop to hear them play. You get to the stadium and get in to hear the pregame performance. You watch the game. As soon as the clock hits triple zero, you pack up your stuff as fast as you can and you run over to the 50 yard line to hear the post game show. As soon as they go into their last song, you book it over to the North tunnel and squeeze in with the others along the wall and get your ears blasted as the band plays marching through the tunnel. You follow them to Bowles Hall. "Hello Bowles Hall!". Then you follow them down Bancroft to Sproul.
And to be clear, this was not with a few parents and band groupies. There was a large crowd that did this. There were a lot of people that "came for the band" or at least for whom the band was an integral part of the experience.
In the years leading up to the opening of the new stadium, my mom got older and it became more and more physically difficult for her to do everything. She'd frequently have to stop and sit at the fountain outside Kroeber while we went and got the car. But she did as much as she could.
When the new stadium opened I got a call from my Mom. She realized that she just physically couldn't do 6 games a year anymore, but she wanted me to take her to the opening of the new stadium (because she couldn't go on her own). So of course I did. And we walked around the stadium and it was beautiful.
Of course, by this time the athletic department was muzzling the band during the game so they could play their ads and do their contests. But that is all part of having to make money. Then, after the game the reality hit. The sections were blocked off and security would not allow you to cross. You had to watch the band from far away in your section. The tunnel was blocked off and people were not allowed to exit that way which meant 1. You couldn't experience the band going through the tunnel and 2. You couldn't follow on their heels. If you watched the band play all their music and march out of the stadium you then had to run to your gate and find yourself waaaaay behind the band marching to Bowles Hall. You pretty much could not do both. The arrangement of the inner bowl of the stadium combined with the actions of security made it infeasible to enjoy the band the way fans had for decades. Basically in one go the tradition of the Cal band was greatly diminished.
It was the last game my mom ever went to. As I said, the games were physically difficult for her and the football she could watch on television. She could not watch the band on television, but effectively her band experience didn't remotely exist, so there was no reason for her to go.
My mom pretty much hated the new stadium because it ruined her whole experience. It did not have to be that way. Nothing she needed would cost the university a penny. It only took caring enough to know that you had this whole sizable group of fans that followed a tradition. The necessary changes would have been minor. I know this doesn't matter to many of you who like to leave and find a local watering hole, but it mattered to a lot of people.
I get that for some of you it is all about the game. That is fine. What my mom wanted and what Cautious wants do not impact that in any way. Your lack of respect and Cal's lack of respect are part of the reason the floor on Cal's attendance is so much lower than it used to be. More and more the in game experience is nothing more than watching the game, and frankly, the actual on the field product of college sports is no better than minor league baseball. Without all the other stuff, it is just minor league.
Cautious, the last basketball game I went to I had the same experience. I hung back with my wife and kids to listen to the band (see my family history above it is just what you do). Literally the back of the line of people who had picked up and left at triple zero were about 20 feet away from me when security was up telling me to get out. It isn't that important to me, so, while I did think "what the hell? The band just started playing" I didn't make an issue and just left. It is not a "it's late and we want to go home thing."
GMP I'm sorry but "they wanted to get home" is a pathetic excuse. If they do their job with reasonable politeness, I'm appreciative and sympathetic to the fact that it is a late night for them. If they don't want to do their job my attitude is if they can't wait ten minutes for Cal fans to finish the game experience they paid for, they can let somebody who is willing to do that job take it. They knew what the job was when they signed on. It might not be important to you, but it is important to other Cal fans. It is not like Cautious was asking to sit and talk with his buddies for 45 minutes after everything was over. The band plays like 3 songs after the game ends.
I also have to say that the attitude from some of you that somehow Cautious should shut up because Cal has managed to field a team that can beat opponents it should beat 99 out of 100 times is laughable. That is all it takes for Cal to be allowed to ignore its fans with impunity? I guarantee you Ohio State is not kicking fans out of the football stadium when the band is playing and Kansas is not kicking fans out of the arena when the band is playing. I hate to tell you this, but UNLV is not supposed to be a good team and the struggle we had to beat them is an indicator that rougher times may be ahead in conference (as we all expected). After what we've been through, we should absolutely appreciate every victory. Cautious is fully capable of appreciating a win and not appreciating being treated like crap by Cal staff. Frankly, national championships are no excuse for that (and I think you'd find see above that national championship type programs don't treat their fans that way). But certainly beating subpar midmajor teams is not a get out of jail free card for Cal's athletic administration.
