Everyone griping about the "blue-hairs" at the bottom of Sam's article is full of it. I've been going to Husker games for 30 years and I've never been told to "sit down" by someone older than me. This is one of those ridiculous urban legends that people repeat without thinking how utterly ridiculous it is that SO MANY people would be told to sit down, shut up at a game. If everyone griping about the "blue hairs" was telling a true story, Memorial Stadium would be 50% full of geriatrics cases. It's just not reality.
What is reality is that the older the crowd - and our crowd is older than most places - the quieter they're going to be. Why would our crowd be older? Because ticket prices are sky-high. We've had two to three straight generations of sold-out stadiums. You have to donate what, $500? $1,000 just to get your name on the list, and then it's points-based, so you accumulate points over time by donating more. Whose going to be sitting in the better seats with a system like that, the younger, loud crowd or the older, more reserved crowd? Not the young families, or 20-30 year old crowd willing to stand and yell for the whole game, that's for sure.
As long as you continue to sell ONLY season tickets at $350 a pop and higher, and tack on a minimum donation of $500 to that, added to the points system, you're not going to have younger, more energetic crowds going to these games.
This is the two-edged sword of having a program that's this successful over the long term. You end up with an older fan base and a quieter stadium.