"Small Crowds, Little Love"

For as long as he can remember, Friday nights in November have meant one thing to Dave Dawson - football at Bishop McDavitt High School.

Growing up in Camp Hill, Pa., Dawson was used to seeing fans start tailgating at noon for a night game, and students and townspeople arriving by the thousands, just for a high school team.

"It was just the thing to do on a Friday night, go the football game at the high school," said Dawson, now a sophomore at UB and a star running back for the Bulls.

It was quite an experience, said Dawson, even if you weren't on the football field.

UB could learn a few things from Dawson, and from Camp Hill, Pa.

Three years removed from his playing days in high school, Dawson is now surrounded by a student body that has been, at times, downright apathetic about its sports teams and has even displayed what some consider an anti-school spirit.

This fall, the UB football team averaged the lowest home attendance in the Mid-American Conference with 9,414 people per game. This marked the lowest average since UB joined the MAC in 1999 - when it averaged 14,399 per game - and the second time in five years the Bulls failed to fill even one-third of UB Stadium.

But UB football is not alone in the MAC cellar for attendance.

Keeping it company this winter is men's basketball, which averaged a conference-low 2,131 fans per game as of Thursday. At this rate, men's basketball game attendance will fail to average a quarter of Alumni Arena's capacity for the fourth straight year.

To explain the low attendance, one could point out the obvious: the football team was 1-11, the basketball team is 8-10, and no one wants to see a losing team.

"Sports is pretty simple in terms of attendance," said Paul Vecchio, the assistant director of Athletics. "If you win, you draw well. Our football attendance has fallen off for, if any other reason, a few bad seasons."

Yet apply that argument to UB, and it doesn't entirely work.

There are several men's basketball teams in the MAC this season with worse records than UB that are drawing bigger crowds, sometimes by the thousands. Ohio University, which was the only team UB football beat this fall, had only one more win than UB, yet averaged over 6,000 more fans a game.

Many say UB has bigger problems than "a few bad seasons," and if anyone knows this best, it's the students themselves.

"There is no school spirit," said Eytan Agman, a freshman pharmacy major. "They try so hard to get people to come to the games, but nobody does."

"People don't seem to have an interest in going to events like that," said Josh Gelb, a freshman undecided major. "Everyone seems more concerned with what's going on that night and, 'Where can we get trashed?'"

Rayshon Higgins, a freshman undecided major on the track team, agrees that UB seems to have an anti-school spirit and cited a "lack of tradition" as the reason.

"I feel that it's not what it should be from a D-1 school," he said. "You look at a school like (University of) Tennessee and it's a sea of orange (the team color) at their games. Here you see bleachers."

In blaming the school's lack of tradition, Higgins isn't alone. Vecchio said there are generations of UB students who graduated without experiencing a competitive collegiate athletics program.

"In the '50s and '60s, athletics here at UB was a big deal," said Vecchio. "But during the '70s, '80s and early '90s, we lost over 20 years of not competing at that level anymore, and that really hurt us."

But now that UB has been in the MAC for five years, said Vecchio, fans are finally starting to realize the elite level at which UB is competing again.

"Win, lose, or draw, we're trying to be with the best," said Vecchio. "There are only 116 other schools in the country competing at the level we are.

"People don't understand that a) they can go to the games for free and b) the competition is really good. Winning cures a lot of that, but in the meantime a lot of the solution is the kids," Vecchio said. "It's question that the students have to ask themselves. When you go to a school, you can choose to be involved and have pride in a university you chose to go to, or don't."

Many critics of UB athletics say UB switched into the MAC and the top Division I-A playing level too quickly, but Vecchio stands by the university's decision.

"We were asked (to join), and we were flattered," he said. "That's where we thought our university should fit - on a national level."

Vecchio stressed it's impossible to expect UB's spirit to be at the height of a school like Duke University - which averaged 20,000 fans per football game even in the middle of a 23-game losing streak - but he thinks UB athletics and its fan support are headed in the right direction.

"Those positive things that happen will spread the word, just like the negative things have. It works both ways," said Vecchio, who cited successful attendance numbers for the women's basketball team. "Sports is very cyclical. It could happen here, but it's not going to happen overnight."

So until the day comes when UB draws tremendous, fanatic crowds, even in losing seasons, the players and their fans will have to struggle through growing pains together.

For Dawson, the lack of school spirit has been frustrating, but he doesn't think that merely winning games will have all UB students painting themselves blue and white.

"I have experienced here at UB a great atmosphere here and there," he said. "When we do get the support it's awesome."

Dawson said if he had to, he would play in front of five people, but if he has one pet peeve, it's students who don't show up to the games and complain that they want a big-time football team and atmosphere.

"We're all out here busting our butts, now what are you going to do?" he said. "It's our university and we're in it together. The only way to turn it around is winning games, and for people come out and jump on the bandwagon and experience it. I think (UB spirit) is definitely on the rise, little by little."

So far, Dawson likes the fan support he's seen, but would love to see more.

"A little more excitement and a little more support could go along way," he said.