Vaught-Hemingway Statium is seen during a game last year. File Photo
With the tough-fought win over Memphis last Saturday, Oxford is abuzz with the excitement that can only come with College GameDay arriving in town along with the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Grove, the usual place-to-be on any gameday, will be packed with fans in navy and crimson, and the athletics department is hoping they all flow over to the stadium for an experience equal to the Grove.
“Bama will probably be the biggest game in Oxford,” said Michael Thompson Jr., senior associate of communications and marketing at the Ole Miss athletics department. “We’ll see what we’re made of as far that gameday experience goes. There’ll be a lot of people here.”
Thompson and the athletics department have been working on adding new improvements to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium to make it a comparable experience to the Grove and keep fans in their seats for as long as possible.
“We want people to get to this stadium before the game and be there for pregame,” Thompson said. “We want people to stay for the whole game. That’s what having a home-field advantage is all about. To have a home-field advantage, you have to have people in the stands to create it.”
This is the fourth year in a row, according to Thompson, that the athletics department has published their survey results and began implementing improvements to the stadium. The list of things they’ve been able to do this year is long, but Thompson said they’ve really gotten feedback on the main improvements, which he calls “fan favorites.”
Game play-by-play audio in restrooms and the 22 new points of sale for concessions underneath the west side have been two of the top improvements.
“John Currence with City Grocery being over all of our concessions and catering has been massive,” Thompson said. “Giving (fans) the things they really want, like good food because they’ve been in the Grove and they’ve had great food, and so when they get into the stadium, that needs to continue.”
However, Thompson thinks the Wi-Fi provided by C Spire has been the biggest and best improvement.
“I think that the Wi-Fi is definitely a fan favorite. That in there has been huge,” Thompson said.
C Spire provided free Wi-Fi for all cellphone users for the first two home games, but this weekend C Spire will charge $4.99 for the whole game for any cellphone user with a different provider.
Caitlin Kennedy, a junior majoring in political science and English, likes to use her phone throughout the football game to post photos of her and her friends, but since she has a different service provider, she’s not looking forward to having to use her data plan instead of the Wi-Fi.
“They don’t charge for the Ole Miss Wi-Fi found all over campus,” Kennedy said. “I think, especially as a student, to have that luxury introduced then taken away isn’t fair.”
Thompson, however, is not worried that students will react negatively.
“For non-C Spire customers, you’ll have plenty of people pay the $4.99. It’s less than a Coke,” Thompson said.
Thompson said the athletics department is trying to create different, fun things to encourage students to keep logging in to the Wi-Fi, such as Instagram hashtags and the new Rebel Rewards app that rewards the loyalty of Rebel fans.
“We’re going to be doing some things with that program that helps us reward people for staying the whole game, getting there early and some very specific things like that,” Thompson said.
As great as the other improvements and the Wi-Fi seem, students haven’t seemed to really notice a change.
Kate McDill, a senior majoring in communication sciences and disorders, said she hasn’t really noticed anything different, especially in the student section.
“The Wi-Fi is still too slow to compete,” McDill said. “I still can’t post to social media and Instagram, so I haven’t noticed much of a difference between this season and last season.”
Sarah Jackson, a senior majoring in music and political science, agreed.
“I feel like a lot of students leave at halftime and don’t come back,” Jackson said. “A lot of them want to go to the Square or back to the Grove.”
Thompson admitted the Grove is one of the biggest struggles the athletics department has to deal with when trying to get fans to the stadium and keep them there.
“We’ve found that when people leave the game, they’re not leaving to go home. They’re going to the Grove,” Thompson said. “And when they’re not coming in early, it’s not like they got to campus late. They’re at the Grove.”
Thompson, however, understands the stadium will never have a better experience than the Grove, so it’s not his goal for Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
“The Grove is one of those things where it is the greatest asset in the world,” Thompson said. “There’s nothing like it in the whole world. We’ll never deliver the same experience, but we try to deliver a comparable one.”
Thompson thinks this goal will be better realized next year when the newest improvements are unveiled.
“We have some great ideas for next year that are going to be awesome,” he said. “They just haven’t been made public.”
