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It's been an intense discussion amongst Syracuse Orange fans in the week since the Wake Forest game and it's 26K attendance. While a lot of Orange fans squabbled with one another about which one's fault it was, I posited that it's Syracuse Athletics who has dropped the ball when it comes to making SU Football games seem like can't-miss events.
Writing that piece on Tuesday, I wasn't aware of any special deals or promos that SU was running for this Saturday's Central Michigan game. Despite the fact that SU has the chance to go 3-0 for the first time since 1991, the attendance promises to be fairly low for at least one more week. You would think if SU Athletics had any tricks up their sleeves, no was the time to use them.
Wednesday, I finally became aware. Just barely.
If you search hard enough, you might find out that all "school age" kids who attend the game with a paying adult will get in to the Dome for free. I know this because SU Director of Athletic Communications Pete Moore tweeted it out.
Saturday's a great chance for school-age kids to see the 2-0 SU football team. Buy an adult ticket and get a youth ticket FREE! #OrangeKids
— Pete Moore (@MooreOrange) September 16, 2015
As far as I can tell as of the time of this writing (Wednesday evening), no one else has mentioned this deal on Twitter. Not the official Cuse Football feed, not the SU Athletics feed, not the Voice of the Orange and not Coach Shafer. It's mentioned near the bottom of football articles written this week on Cuse.com but hasn't received it's own article or announcement. In fact, this article that I'm writing is probably the most promotion the deal will have gotten to date (where's my check?).
I say all of this not just to demean or make fun. I say all of this just to point out the stunning lack of effort on display right now at SU Athletics. I don't know what's going on behind closed doors but I have to imagine that the low attendance numbers are affecting revenue. And I also have to imagine there have been some sternly-worded conversations about reversing this trend.
And yet, if you don't go digging to find out that LITERALLY ALL CHILDREN GET IN FREE ON SATURDAY SO TELL EVERY PARENT YOU KNOW, you'd probably never know about it.