Ladies and gentlemen, the Pride of the Buckeyes, The Best Damn ... DJ In The Land?
Yeah, I’m gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road ...
And gag ‘til I can’t no more.
Seriously, what!?
If you’re just tuning in, Ohio State announced the other day that the new features at Ohio Stadium this fall will include: “A DJ on the field level both pregame and during the game playing everyone’s favorites to enhance the gameday environment.”
I hate to sound like the get-off-my-lawn guy here, but I just applied a treatment and ...
GET OFF MY LAWN.
This feels like the lame result of a market study — conducted for $12 million by a British branding firm — titled: How to attract millennials to American football matches?
What if you replaced Script Ohio with the incomparable Shipped Ohio — a scoreboard race between three FedEx trucks — and lasers?
Hmm, that’s good. What else you got?
Well, what about an on-field DJ? Our survey found that four percent of football fans 18 to 34 would be more likely to attend games if there was more bass and less brass, including one respondent named Meghan (Trainor) who, in fact, made clear it is “All About That Bass.”
Perfect!
We’re having fun here, but, really, the beauty of college football is the tradition and the pageantry and the passion.
If the NFL can sell a better product, colleges can sell the better environment, including Ohio State.
There are few scenes in sports like a Saturday inside the Horseshoe, and the band — The Best Damn Band In The Land — is a big part of it, galvanizing the congregation of more than 100,000 with the rites and hymns of autumn. Fans arrive early for the ramp entrance and march down the field, await the playing of “Hang on Sloopy” before the fourth quarter, and stay late for the postgame rendition of “Carmen Ohio,” the alma mater.
Compare the scene a half hour before a game at Ohio Stadium and a half hour before a Browns or Lions kickoff. At the ‘Shoe, the place is nearly full, erupting when the band takes the field. In Cleveland or Detroit, it’s empty, because no one at a tailgate has ever said, “Hey, guys, hurry up, we’ve got to get inside in time for, ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling!’”
The point: college bands are awesome.
Now, I know the DJ is not going to replace the band at Ohio State, nor is piped-in music anything new (or bad). A mix of the band and a few of “everyone’s favorites” is great.
I appreciate, too, the need for schools to evolve or fall behind in an era where the gameday experience at home has never been better.
Would you rather watch the big game on your 4K Godzillatron or spend an arm, leg, and two mortgage payments to take the family to the stadium? (At Ohio State, for instance, the cheapest face-value ticket for the Penn State game is $198). More and more, fans are opting for the former. No schools are immune, including OSU, which had its 16-year streak of six-figure crowds end last year when 93,057 fans turned out for its Big Ten opener against Rutgers.
Still, the answer is not to take away from what makes your experience uniquely special.
An on-field DJ? Come on.
This is fixing what ain’t broke.
Long live the bands.
First Published August 25, 2019, 9:46 p.m.
