[OT: $10,000 Cornell Field Goal Kicks]

[rhovorka]

[q]the ball will be held by president lehman[/q]
Let J. Andrew Noel be the one holding the ball, and I'll pay $10K to take a kick.  ::uptosomething::

[rhovorka]

The bear problem needs its own thread.  But I will say this:

The bears used to entertain.  They'd do stunts, tricks, and skits.  I was lucky enough to participate in some of the intermission entertainment several times.  Now if there's no candy, the bear has nothing to do!?  I'd rather have no bear than a lame bear.

[DisplacedCornellian]

Rich H '96 wrote:

The bear problem needs its own thread.  But I will say this:

The bears used to entertain.  They'd do stunts, tricks, and skits.  I was lucky enough to participate in some of the intermission entertainment several times.  Now if there's no candy, the bear has nothing to do!?  I'd rather have no bear than a lame bear.

I agree.  A couple of years ago the bears put a little effort into mocking Alabama-Huntsville, and it was actually quite funny.  Since then, I don't think they've done anything but throw candy and *cringe* strip at the end of the season  ::uhoh::

[Al DeFlorio]

Rich H '96 wrote:

[q]the ball will be held by president lehman[/q]
Let J. Andrew Noel be the one holding the ball, and I'll pay $10K to take a kick.  ::uptosomething::

My nomination for best posting of the year. ::laugh::

[Beeeej]

Given how bad a skater the bear was at the first WMU game, I don't think it's just the candy problem that has benched the bear (if in fact the bear has been benched).  Let's face it - this guy was not an ice skater by any stretch of the imagination.  Back in late '92 or early '93 I skated as the bear after driving a twelve-hour taxicab shift, and because I was having trouble, the Pep Band started a rousing chant of "The Bear drives a cab!" - and I was skating ten times as well as this joker.

Don't they have tryouts anymore?!

Beeeej

[A-19]

given to how this thread has turned into an anti-bear conversation (which i unfortunately started, nonetheless), i am surprised at the general lack of interest from all you cornell sports fans out there, with regard to this FG event. no current students reading this forum are interested in winning $10,000?

-mike

[Section A]

Oh I'm interested. I just can't kick a 45-yard field goal     ::worry::

"now that's the kind of attitude that isn't going to get you anywhere..."

Um, that's right. I just had a conversation with myself  ::help::

I need to sleep.

[Shorts]

[Q]no current students reading this forum are interested in winning $10,000?[/q]
Ding ding!  Give this man a cigar!

You mentioned the figure of 350 people wanting to play (amounting to less than 2% of the stadium capacity).  Assuming that all of these are people who otherwise wouldn't attend the game (which is not clear), that still works out to about $2 per person.  I'm not sure what the difference is between a draw to the event and an advertised reward for coming.  However, when Cornell Dining decided to move their operations for the day to the area of the football field, people followed the food, and there was a great turnout for freshmen on the field.

You claimed that:[Q]the whole thing will take 5 minutes. don't worry, we're not cutting into your band time[/Q]While that seems a small part of a day, even a small part of the total game time, halftime is only 20 minutes long.

I'm sure plenty of people would be interested in having $10,000.  However, I think most people are not as interested in a contest where the expectation value of the total winnings is only $700, which is divided among all the 350+ contestants, and the price of participation is having to sit through at least half of a big red football game.  Otherwise, you would see lots of students picking up part time jobs in order to feed their consumption of lottery tickets.

Lastly, as I understand it, the funding for this comes from the Student Activity Fee, and that money from that fee already goes towards making student tickets to Athletic events free.  If football games are so non-entertaining that people don't attend when they're free, we can assume that a person gets less benefit from watching the game than from whatever else they might be doing on a Saturday morning.  So, from an economic standpoint: students already have to pay enough money to completely subsidize attendence at Athletic events.  This isn't enough to spur attendence, however, and so the Class of 2004 student government has decided to take even more money from the class, in order to actually pay people to attend the game.  The term "Econ 101" gets bandied about far too much in forums these days, but it genuinely is a concept from introductory Economics that you cannot possibly make a person better off by taking his money, buying something, and giving him back what you chose to buy, if it's something he could have purchased individually (ie. exceptions exist for things that can only be bought "in bulk", like roads).

[nyc94]

I agree with your economic analysis but in this case aren't they trying to boost attendance for Seniors on the Field, not the game itself?  I think they made the decision that it was worth $700 to get a larger portion of the senior class to participate.  We can argue whether this is a good use of the money (I don't think so) but maybe we should let it go. :-)

[jtwcornell91]

In my day, we didn't need to be bribed to participate in Seniors on the Field.  The opportunity to swamp the Penn band was reward enough. :-}

[jtwcornell91]

Avash '05 wrote:

Oh I'm interested. I just can't kick a 45-yard field goal     ::worry::

I don't think I could kick a 15 yard feild goal.  ::help::

[Bear]

With regards to the Bear... the person who did it for the last 3 years graduated with an advanced degree, and newbies have since been doing it.  As far as the candy issue, I imagine that if is disalowed, it was one so by the rink director...ask him.  I wish i knew more, but im not in Ithaca this semester.  If you are unhappy with the bear at hockey, and have suggestions on how to improve their entertainment, contact the Athletic office.

As far as no bears being present, there have been some scheduling difficulties this year.

[jeh25]

John T. Whelan '91 wrote:

I don't think I could kick a 15 yard feild goal.  ::help::

{inside joke}
I could throw it through the uprights from the 15 yd line....
{/inside joke}

[CowbellGuy]

The candy incident occurred when the bear threw some candy up in the first intermission and some idiot near the B/C aisle threw some back or maybe it just never got over the glass. The refs spotted it and some rink people had to come out and clean it off the ice, delaying the start of the period. The bear came out in the second intermission with his bucket of candy, put it down near the goal, and while he was off falling down or something, Phil walked on the ice and took the candy away.

[rhovorka]

Cowbell Guy wrote:

The candy incident occurred when the bear threw some candy up in the first intermission and some idiot near the B/C aisle threw some back or maybe it just never got over the glass. The refs spotted it and some rink people had to come out and clean it off the ice, delaying the start of the period.

The cool thing to do in D-E is apparently catch the candy and chuck it really hard back at the bear and laugh about it.  There were at least a half-dozen pieces of candy on the ice at that end of the rink when the refs and WMU skated out for the 2nd period.  This happened several times last season as well...I have a pretty good view of it from my usual position in H.  I actually applaud Phil for putting an end to the bear-candy.  Watching the bear clumsily fumble around trying to throw candy at other people isn't particularly fun anyway.  

And maybe I will contact the Athletic Office with ideas.  You know...goal-diving, headstands, skits, etc.   Just look at Goldy the Gopher for a model of an entertaining mascot.



Post Edited (11-13-03 15:43)