Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Gridiron Guarantee?

Check out this article my dad forwarded to me from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Stanford University is giving what they call a "Gridiron Guarantee" to get more fans to come to their games. Basically, if you aren't satisfied with the "entertainment value" of the games by November 15 when USC visits, you get your money back.

I bring this up because I am curious to see what people think about Vandy doing the same thing. Seems to me that Stanford will lose a lot of money and put a ton of pressure on their team to win games, but their game-day atmosphere will be much improved.

With that said, Vandy's game-day atmosphere at home leaves a lot to be desired because of all the opposing team's fans. However, Stanford's schedule does not feature the marquee teams that Vandy's does, and thus, it seems like Vandy doing this would be even more costly. While I would love to have a packed stadium of Vandy fans for big SEC games, I don't think I would be willing to do this. One game a year, like the South Carolina game this year since it is on ESPN, may be worth it.

What do you think? Would you be in favor of Vandy giving out a guarantee to put fans in the seats and build a fan base around Nashville? Or is the economic loss too great?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Vandy has done a promo in the past in which you pay for season tickets, but get the first three home games to decide if you want a refund or you want to keep them. So say they tank, which historically is possible, people are getting refunds by October or so.