WVU students should be closer to the action

Penn State has Beaver Stadium nestled in Happy Valley.

There's Death Valley, The Swamp and Rocky Top in the SEC, too.

Notre Dame, Ohio State and Texas have stadiums that each bring a significant factor to the table in the college football landscape that can't be found inside Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown – a student section that makes an impact on games.

Sure, Morgantown is a great place to be on game days in the fall. This year will be no different.

But that atmosphere does not translate to the intensity inside the stadium. Comparing West Virginia's student section to the rest of the elite is like comparing Natty Lite to Stella Artois – it doesn't come close.

While West Virginia students show up in large numbers to watch the games, they make little impact on the game. But, it's not necessarily the students' fault, because the majority of them are sitting in the upper deck of the stadium, not down at field level.

With new Athletic Director Oliver Luck taking over, the topic of relocating the student section, one that will not change in 2010 from previous years, will hopefully be something worth discussing.

If anything has become clear through all this conference expansion talk, college football is about one thing: money.

One of the obvious reasons the student section is primarily in the upper deck of Milan Puskar Stadium is because the University can sell more primetime seating closer to the field.

The best student sections throughout college football are down closer to the field, where they can make noise and give the home team an advantage.

At Penn State, the student section which holds 21,000 rabid students, starts at field level and wraps from the goals posts to nearly midfield.

Other schools like Auburn, Notre Dame, Michigan, USC and nearly all SEC schools also have a predominately lower student section.

In the Big East Conference, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Florida and Syracuse all place students near the field.

Another common occurrence around the country is the location of the band, usually plotted right in the middle or close to the student section.

At WVU, the band is located behind the goal posts near Touchdown Terrace, not close enough to the student section to have the students involved with it.

Growing up in Massachusetts, I spent my childhood as a season ticket holder at Boston College in Chestnut Hill. The student section at BC is considerably smaller than WVU's but closer to the field and next to the band. Students get involved with the band whether singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" or "Sweet Caroline."

Because the section is closer to the field, it can make some serious noise.

Some feel students haven't picked up their end of the deal by being committed to attending games for a full four quarters. It has become all too familiar with ESPN broadcasts to see a half-filled student section. During last year's Gold Rush against Colorado, the broadcast team circled a huge empty section in the WVU student section making a joke of how empty the seats were.

It wasn't a pretty or ideal display of loyalty from the students, but can you really blame them?

Students want to be next to the action, where they know they can make an impact.

At some point it needs to be about the students who love WVU as much as the others who fill up the stadium.

Luck is in position to make a splash and make the atmosphere in Morgantown even better.

Not only would it help the students and make their
college experience better, it would help the team.

When Boston College's much smaller student section makes more of an impact on football games than that of WVU's larger section, something isn't right.

Hopefully Luck does the right thing in putting the students down low next to the band like the rest of the elite schools in the future. If nothing less, Luck and his administration should discuss the proposition.