This past weekend SMU enjoyed a day of homecoming festivities, including a parade, Boulevarding activities and, of course, a football game. Our football team broke its losing streak by beating Tulane 45 to 24. However, if you were to ask a good amount of SMU students, a lot of them might not have been there to read that on the scoreboard.

Now, I know this is going to sound entirely hypocritical for me of all people to complain about the lackluster student attendance at our football games.

I enjoy neither football nor school spirit so Homecoming weekend isn’t exactly my cup of tea. However, I’m at least consistent about my disdain for sports-related activities, and I also don’t partake in most Boulevarding as well.

Many fans, on the other hand, see it differently. You’ll never find a lack of people hitting up the tents on Bishop for free food (as well as certain “adult beverages”), but the stands in the stadium are a different story.

A friend of mine told me that this weekend the fans’ actions were particularly egregious. While the stands were next to empty for almost the entire first half, a few minutes before half time the stadium suddenly swelled with people. And then, following the announcement of the Homecoming King and Queen, everyone left almost as soon as they entered.

Showing up to a football game and leaving around the third quarter is one thing, but arriving only for the intermission just baffles me.

Why did people have to come to the football game for that announcement? Is it really so important that you couldn’t just text someone to find out or simply wait to read about it in The Daily Campus the next day?

I suppose you could make the argument that you could also just as easily read about the outcome of the football game the next day as well, but I think there’s a difference here. No matter how many people show up to the football game, one team is still going to win and another is going to lose, but if no one’s going to actually watch the game why do we even have this exercise in the first place?

In high school I performed in a few student-run theater programs, and one thing I learned about good theater is how important the audience is to the show. Everyone likes to have an audience after all, and often actors feed off the response that the people watching the show offer.

In some ways I can see football games as an alternative kind of stage. You’ve of course got the players on the field who have been practicing a tremendous amount since the beginning of the season (in the Texas summer heat, mind you) to put on a good game, but you’ve also got people like the cheerleaders and Peruna handlers who help to make these games what they are too. And when people leave these games early it’s almost like the work that all these people have done to make these events possible has gone to waste.

I can’t fault people for wanting to enjoy a bit of tailgating on a football game day because it’s often an exciting occasion.

But don’t be a free rider; if you’re going to take advantage of the fun we have on the Boulevard, at least remember why we Boulevard in the first place and show up to the football games.

Brandon Bub is a sophomore majoring in English and edits The Daily Campus opinion column. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].