By Zach Zimmerman on October 5, 2010

Prior to the event-that-shall-not-be-named that took place on Saturday night, I started to regret my decision not to make the trip up to Eugene. I decided to stay on campus for three reasons: 1) I was broke, 2) I needed to study German, a new language for me in which I knew the word for “f******” but not “brother,” and 3) there was going to be a potentially awesome mass viewing at Angell Field.

So my girlfriend and I, being the sports optimists that we are, decided to set out for the viewing party at 3:30 p.m. with hopes of securing ourselves prime positions for the single big screen. Keep in mind that kickoff for the event-that-shall-not-be-named was scheduled for 5:12 p.m.

We ended up being late (standard) and didn’t make it to the field until about 4:18. What met us was both surprising and infuriating.

The field was empty except for 25 red-vested security guards on major power trips.

We approached the makeshift “SUID ONLY” sign, only to get the stiff arm from the queen bee of the rent-a-guard clan.

“We’re not open yet,” she barked at us. Not open yet? Kickoff is in less than an hour.

“When do you open?”

Before she responded, she gave me the kind of look that a neighbor gives you if your dog shits in his yard.

“4:30!”

This woman, in all the glory that comes with carrying an SUID scanner, is what is wrong with the sports scene at Stanford.

Before coming to the Farm, I had visions of campouts three days in advance of big games. Maybe my ideal world was skewed by hundreds of images that saturated my brain of Duke kids parked outside Cameron Indoor Stadium a week before the UNC game. Believe it or not, those kids are also smart. They also care about their schoolwork and their futures. But they really, really care about Duke basketball. If they have a test, they study with five of their friends in a tent on the concrete.

Unfortunately, that sports-above-all culture doesn’t exist here. Here, it’s perfectly acceptable to show up for a home basketball game against UCLA with six minutes left in the game, only to leave with two minutes remaining in a four-point game. Here, it takes a free T-shirt to draw a full student section at Stanford Stadium. And here, you can arrive at a school-wide viewing party for the biggest football game in a freaking decade, only to be spurned at the gate by a pissed off security guard.

Unlike some of my fellow columnists, I can’t put all the blame on the students. Despite our athletic prowess—YEAH 16 DIRECTORS’ CUPS WE ROCK, YEAH—this is not a sports school. It’s a shame, but no one gives a damn about the Directors’ Cup. We won’t be a sports school until every component of a successful athletics program—the students, faculty, athletic department, party planning committees, red-vested field Nazis, etc.—comes together for the sole purpose of improving the life of a Stanford fan.

This begins with events like Saturday. These are not cocktail parties. I’m not trying to show up 45 minutes before a game, make small talk, munch on some cheese and then eat dinner. I want to eat four meals, play some touch football and drink my weight in cheap beer. Game day should be a day, not a three-hour gathering.

Yet we see the same pattern, year after year. The first football home game is packed, and if you take out the USC, Cal and Oregon games, there is a steady decrease in attendance. And if we face a team like Washington the week after an away game, you can hear crickets in Stanford Stadium.

The Sixth Man follows the Red Zone’s lead and performs an annual vanishing act just a month into the season. It is entirely possible to show up for a game at tip-off and grab a spot at center court. If you tried to pull the same stunt at Duke, you’d be lucky to find a seat at a sports bar within a five-mile radius of Cameron Indoor.

One of the biggest contributors to the decline in sport popularity is the coma the campus goes into when one of our big teams hits the road. The Cardinal faithful need to change the way they handle the absence of their teams. When any sports team from Oregon or USC comes to the Farm, you can feel the presence of its fans, both those in attendance and those hundreds of miles away.

We really do have amazing athletes in a giant variety of sports. It’s time to care. Saturday’s event was beautiful in theory, and horrifying in execution. That type of school-wide gathering should be held on a regular basis. There doesn’t always need to be food and drinks provided, just a place to hang out and watch the game. It may not make us Oregon or Duke, but we won’t be the University of Chicago either.

And most importantly, we don’t need people running the event that feel inconvenienced by eager students. All we need is one Ben Laufer and a dream, not a redcoat army.

So fans, there is no such thing as a bye week. We need you to throw more viewing parties, party throwers. It’s time to change the Cardinal experience.

Zach probably assumes you don’t care about this column either. Show him your dedication at [email protected]