Dear Athletics

To the people high up at UB who probably aren't reading this,

I hear that our school wants to be kind of a big deal.
The UB 2020 initiative is supposed to modernize our campus by building state of the art facilities with the goal of reaching academic excellence, beautifying our campus and stimulating the Buffalo-Niagara area.
But if our school really plans on making strides toward becoming the best state school in New York, we must make some drastic athletic changes first.
Why? Because great schools have great sports.
When a college basketball team is ranked, people want to go to games, they want to learn school chants and they want to win big on television. Here at Buffalo, no one attends sporting events, we don't have any signature songs and national attention is a foreign concept.
The two major sports here at Buffalo – men's basketball and football – share the same major flaws: crappy venues, poor advertising, sporadic fan bases and the inability to win consistently.
It starts with our horribly designed venues, which leave our fans detached from the games.
Ever been to a UB basketball game? Probably not, but if you have, you most likely realized that our student section is roughly 10 feet away from the court. Aside from the fact that True Blue barely has any members, the games would be more exciting – both for the fans and the players – if our screaming section was hovering over the court. It would intensify the noise, intimidate the opponents and energize our squad.
The only drawback to moving the bleachers closer to the floor is that the 200-pound cheerleaders probably won't have enough space to flop their bellies around. As shallow as it sounds, hotter cheerleaders actually make a difference. They should be enhancing the game, not blocking fans from watching the action.
Also, our gym floor should read 'BUFFALO' on one baseline and 'BULLS' on the other. Get rid of the small MAC logo. It isn't aesthetically pleasing and it already says what conference we're in on the main hardwood. It's a small change, but it makes a big difference.
Our football stadium, believe it or not, is worse. The track that separates the fans from the game actually kills the football environment. Much like in basketball, we should be on top of the players, screaming drunken slurs that the opposing team can actually hear. Though UB Stadium is relatively new (1993), it remains the worst venue in the MAC simply because of the track.
Half of the reason why our fan base is nearly non-existent is because there is seldom enough advertising leading up to the games. During the football season, it was cool to step over floor ads outside of Capen, the Union and Alumni Arena that announced the upcoming matchup.
These ads should be scattered all around campus before every basketball and football game. On top of that, more giveaways would attract more fans. Of course this can be expensive, but you can't put a price on school spirit.
If more students attended games, I genuinely believe our teams would perform better. This would not only entice better high school athletes to apply to UB, but it would also incline advertisers to pay for their logo to hang in Alumni Arena.
I'm willing to wager that there are two major reasons why people choose not to attend our school. One is the horrific weather and the other is the second-tier athletics. The former is uncontrollable, but the latter is completely in our hands.
Mix better athletics with the UB 2020 initiative and there is no limit to where this university can go. Ignore the problem of school spirit and no matter how many millions of dollars you spend on infrastructure, you'll still have the same old UB.

Signed,
Andrew Wiktor

E-mail: andrew.wiktor@ubspectrum.com