There have been numerous posts, tweets and articles about the fan experience at Doak Campbell Stadium for the Boston College game. Even Mike Norvell was asked about it after Wednesday's practice.
"To be honest with you, totally transparent, I had no clue about that in the moment," Norvell said. "I think last year, Kalen DeLoach and Tatum Bethune asked for a small sequence of some music that would lead into the Marching Chiefs playing."
But throughout the week he heard more about fan complaints about loud house music and not enough music coming from the Marching Chiefs.
"I want to hear them every second of every moment of the game," Norvell said. "They’re remarkable. It’s what makes Florida State special."
Norvell was aware of meetings this week, "making sure that our coordinated approach of trying to create the best atmosphere that we possibly can."
First, the bad news, which you know. The stadium music was way too loud. The play list wasn’t appropriate. The Marching Chiefs didn’t play enough. The scoreboard clock didn’t work for the first quarter, the scoreboard had some pixilation, and Norvell's team lost to Boston College.
Now the good news: As Norvell mentioned there were meetings this week and the people who run Florida State's game day operations own the problems and will have them all corrected by the home game Saturday (noon on ESPN). The playlist will be appropriate when house music is played, and the volume will be turned way down.
Now that Norvell has shared his perspective, I would be remiss if I did not share mine, as a former Seminole Booster VP, who worked on a team to optimize the fan experience in Doak for 19 years.
Marching Chiefs
People have taken sides about who to blame regarding house music vs. the Marching Chiefs. Let me explain how it works at virtually every stadium I'm aware of, in hopes it will explain why there is no need to pick a villain here.
Point 1: The athletic department does not tell the band not to play. There are cues for the band to play and if the band does not play, then the house music is played to fill the dead air. If the band cranks up, then the house music stops.
Point 2: There is about 15 minutes of the 60-minute game when the Chiefs simply cannot play as they are moving between the field and their seats, so during those time periods FSU relies on house music. They are:
- The first three to five minutes of the first quarter when moving to their seats from the pregame show.
- The last seven minutes of the second quarter when moving from their seats to their halftime show.
- The first three to five minutes of the third quarter when they return from their halftime show.
Point 3: In order for the FSU offense to hear their cadence, you don’t want the Chiefs or house music playing when FSU has the ball, which is about half of the game.
Point 4: The exception is when FSU makes a first down. Unfortunately, FSU did not make a first down in the first quarter of the BC game and has averaged only 12 per game thus far, compared to 20 last year.
Point 5: The band is human. They are college students who are also subject to the emotional swings of the game, getting excited and playing when the team is playing well and not so much when the team isn’t.
Every stadium plays house music
Several comments on the Osceola Village have said traditional football powers don’t play house music, but respectfully that just isn’t true. Most stadiums have fan favorites. Alabama has two or three the house plays, including "Sweet Home Alabama." Florida plays Tom Petty’s "Won’t Back Down" to open the fourth quarter, while FSU plays a tribute to Burt Reynolds with the theme song from Smokey and the Bandit, "East Bound and Down."
Reading the posts and comments brought back a miserable memory of the 2009 home opener against Miami. The FSU operations team put together a great Friday Night block party as well as gameday events. Packed the house with 80,077 people. Night game. A lot was going well until the fourth quarter when, trailing 38-34, with the ball at the UM 2-yard line, and 5 seconds on the clock, Christian Ponder’s potential game-winning pass into the end zone was dropped.
If the receiver catches the ball, there’s a 30-minute postgame celebration in the stadium and more partying in the tailgate lots, and half of the cars would have made an orderly exit from the lots. But, no, the receiver drops the ball and everyone is pissed, and in a hurry to get home, which caused hour-long delays in traffic.
Everything the operations team had done well that weekend was quickly forgotten. Anything that had not gone well was IN ALL CAPS on our desk the next morning, and was copied to the president, the governor and everybody but the receiver who dropped the damn ball.
The Florida State game day operations team has owned and is fixing their portion of the fan experience, while Norvell's team has owned and is working on their part too.
"I think we’ve honored the tradition, the people that make this university special. And we’re going to continue to do that," Norvell said. "I was told (the music issue) was every game last year, too. Never heard about last year because we didn’t lose any games last year. We definitely are going to make sure we work to get that part right. But I absolutely want to make sure the Marching Chiefs are a strong presence in everything that we’re doing throughout the course of a game. Play on."
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