Silcox is correct

This “event” is dying a slow death.

The obstinate AD needs to reconsider this moving forward, or at least, recreate it.

Instead, like most things he does — he refuses to listen to others, and is stuck in his ways.

He refuses to embrace Social Media. He has seen his marketing arm out-flanked by the DP and the RBC who recently held a wildly successful viewing party for Penn FB at Smokes. The Athletic Department did little beyond providing some freebies from their marketing closet.

Coach Rudy Fuller has taken to Twitter and has begun a process to start a Supporters Club. Penn Marketing is only involved from a distance.

And lastly, and perhaps most distressing is that the attendance at Penn FB this year has been abysmal. Penn announced 11K for the Yale game. By all accounts, that was grossly exaggerated.

Where is the Accountability on the Athletics Department from the rest of campus?

In the context of THE LINE, it is time that other campus leaders begin to see how deficient Penn Athletics has gotten with regards to marketing Penn Athletics

The failure of the Line has nothing to do with Penn basketball or Bilsky. For the past few decades, Penn has been inundated with fairweather fans. This is not a surprise, but it is sad. When the team wins, the Line will return to prominence—although what’s the point with the current seating arrangement?

I think it has less to do with: “those first to get Penn basketball season tickets also got first dibs on Penn’s allotment of seats for its nearly-inevitable NCAA tournament appearance.” Even in the top years, Penn generally has enough tickets, especially when venues are on the other side of the country. Students aren’t thinking that far ahead.

It has more to do with the current seating arrangement.

Of course, all this being said, the better the team, the more fans will come. In 2001, there were about 75 students. Penn unexpectedly won the league and rose to national prominence. In 2002, there were about 500 students.

Excellent column. Traditions evolve. Time to bring back Freshmen on the Field and Senior Strut, which brought members of the newest class and the graduating class onto Franklin Field for the first and last home games, respectively. Could do it in the Palestra too.

I wouldn’t call this a problem of fair weather fans.

Silcox got it right. Minor changes here and there won’t fix the major problem plaguing Penn Athletics. They are out of touch with the current student body, and seemingly focusing nearly all efforts on those with money to donate.

It is a short term boost in Athletics budget that has severe long term consequences when the current students are thirty years out and looking for somewhere to donate. Do you think they will gladly donate then when they received a cold shoulder while undergraduates? The victims are the current students and the future quakers.

Seems it wasn’t all that long ago that I graduated (‘07), and this event was still attended well enough. I’m sure it will bounce back once the team is once again a favorite to win the league. It’d be an awful idea and quite short sighted to get rid of it because it’s been poorly attended during a down stretch for the program, even if the current students can’t remember when it was a bigger deal.

Of course I think Penn Athletics as a whole could be promoted better, but that’s certainly not a new issue.

Can someone articulate why it would be “an awful idea and quite short sighted” to get rid of the Line, at least in its current format? This “tradition” was created, what, 40 years ago? Do you think it’s a terrible thing that the university replaced Skimmer with Fling? If I’m not mistaken, that was a much longer-running (and more popular) tradition than the Line. And back to the Line, it’s boring and depressing, despite our efforts to make it otherwise, and it turns students away from Penn basketball.

And Ben, I’d like to know when you attended Penn, what the campus atmosphere was like during this time, and how well the basketball team did for your 4-year (or whatever-year) stretch as a student. You made a pretty contentious, generalized, and completely unsubstantiated claim, and I’d like to know if you at least supported the team through some similarly bad years.

I’m a 2001 grad and was an avid Penn basketball fan when I was a student. I rarely missed a home game. I didn’t do The Line my freshman or sophomore year, but I did it my junior and senior years. Not only was it a big contest to try and get to the secret location first, but The Line was a weekend-long event. You had to work in groups of 4 and someone in your group had to be there at all times through Sunday or Monday morning to purchase tickets. It was a big deal and personally, I was in it for more than just a chance at buying tickets to the tournament. When I got to Penn, it was hardly a birthright to go to the NCAA Tournament.. that was at the height of Princeton’s reign atop the league and you can imagine how over-joyed I was to see a large pack of my fellow Penn fans storm the court at Jadwin when we finally took them out my sophomore year.

Somewhat related.. I attended my first Penn home football game last year, the Ivy League clincher against Harvard. I was disgusted by the lack of school Penn fans showed that day. In 1998, there was a big standoff that Penn security claimed anyone who rushed the field following the Penn-Harvard game (which wound up being the Ivy League clincher) would be arrested? Well, there must have been hundreds of fans who stormed onto the field and despite police protecting the goalposts, we tore them down. When we tried to get them out of the stadium to throw them in the Schuylkill as per tradition, security relented on that one once they realized they couldn’t stop us. I consider that day 1 of the more memorable experiences of my Penn career.

I don’t know what the problem is today. I certainly don’t think it’s tied to a lack of success by Penn teams. The football team is as good as its been in 2 decades. The basketball team is only a few years from pretty recent success. If this tradition has to die a slow painful death, so be it. But it speaks to a general apathy I see from the Penn community towards supporting their sports teams. And that is a downright shame that the Athletics Department at Penn should be absolutely ashamed of.

David – With respect to the goalposts? The last time they got torn down was the year before the school installed “indestructable” ones. The next year people tried for like 30-40 minutes to tear the posts down and failed… After that no one bothered storming the field.

Yes, the Line was a week long, required you to have a group of 4 people, and required periodic check-ins by a member of your group. All week long, it was cool to be able to say, “I can’t talk now, I have to go check in at the Line.” But the comment about the current seating is a huge point. Student season ticket holders had RESERVED SEATS, and those seats were on the south side of the stadium, not the west end. In fact, to me, that was the biggest reason for being in the Line. If the University wants to get more students to come to the games, why not let them sit in good seats where they can actually see the whole game?