Oct. 6, 2008

Thank You UMass Fans & Students

On behalf of the athletic department and football program, we would like to thank you for the outstanding attendance at Saturday's football win against Delaware. The crowd of more than 16,000 was the largest regular-season crowd in 34 years!

I am sure that your energy, enthusiasm and encouragement played a large role in the team's success on the field. We have four remaining home games starting with the Homecoming game against Richmond on Saturday, Oct. 18 and I would love to see the same type of boisterous crowd supporting the Minutemen.

We are continuing to attempt to make McGuirk Alumni Stadium more fan-friendly for all our fans and have taken steps recently including the addition or more bathroom facilities and student re-entry policy.

We are fully aware of the student entrance issue this past Saturday, and I am personally thrilled that we had such a huge walk-up crowd of students to support the team. We are continuing to maintain a safe and controlled environment at the games.

Some of the steps have taken to improve the quality of the game experience for the students have worked well and frankly, some have not. The wristband concept in particular took too long and led to those long lines when most of the student arrived right at game time. The system did solve the overcrowding issue in the west side of the stands, but again it was too slow.

We are thinking of modifying the system further to make the admission go more smoothly. Specifically we plan to have both north gates open for student admission right from the beginning. Admission to the west side will be limited to the first 2500 student and will be held for students only as this is the most popular section by far for students. Wrist bands will only be issued to students who wish to leave and return to the stadium. On the east side students will be admitted and have access to the general admission sections via the student only gate in the north east corner (we will be adding additional signage).

Students will have to enter one of the two student only gates so that we can get an accurate count of admissions. This is similar to the process that has been used for years at the Mullins Center. We will make sure all ticket takers are familiar with the process.

Again, thanks to the more than 16,000 of you who made their way to McGuirk to support the football team and we look forward to four more games with similar crowds this season.

John McCutcheon
UMass Director of Athletics