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Students need to step up to keep campout

August 7, 2013

Michigan State University athletics has many great traditions in its history, such as protecting the Spartan statue the week MSU plays Michigan or Midnight Madness at Breslin Center.

But one of those traditions now is in jeopardy of coming to a stop altogether.

Organizers of the preseason Izzone campout are considering putting a halt to the event, where students campout in order to get better seating priority in the Izzone when the seating begins.

While no official announcement has been made on if the campout will be canceled by the MSU Alumni Association, many students have voiced their outrage if the campout does, in fact, come to an end.

But the notion the campout potentially could be canceled speaks to a possible bigger problem.

An email sent out to Izzone members said the reason changes might be on the way was because of last year’s overall attendance numbers and general reception from the event and to gauge the students opinion on how they feel about the campout, as it currently stands.

The same could be said from fan attendance at the games as well, where there wasn’t much enthusiasm on the part of the students in the stands last season, outside of big marquee games such as Michigan, Indiana and Ohio State.

If there isn’t much interest in the campout from the student population, then the Alumni Association has every right to re-evaluate it and see if there is a better way of determining ticket priority among the students. There’s no reason to waste any resource or have Munn field torn up from the students if the interest isn’t as high as it used to be.

This might be the wake-up call the Spartan fan base needs. The current generation has seen a lack of enthusiasm, whether its getting too inebriated at the games and embarrassing themselves in front of everyone, or not caring about the action of the game and spending a lot of time on their phone and embarrassing the fanbase. The threat of having one tradition amongst the students taken away could be what the campout needs to generate more interest.

But the campout has been a means of bringing the MSU student population together, as well as connecting them to the basketball team and men’s basketball head coach Tom Izzo. It has this special connection unlike any other of the traditions that provides this crossover. Just because there is lower attendance doesn’t mean the diehard fans who do wait in line should be deprived of this tradition.

Ultimately, it’s up to the fans what they want to see. There still are many people who are willing to sleep out in tents to get good basketball tickets.

But as a whole, the fan base does need to change — that is, if they want to continue doing the fun tradition they have done in the past.

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