Good sttendance helps boost morale of Utah State’s football team
Saturday, a record-breaking number of fans filled Romney Stadium for the second week in a row. On a typical game day, one can’t help but notice the mass amounts of fans streaming into the football stadium. Some fans wear their team colors or shirts with the team logo on them, other fans choose to sport nothing except body paint of their team’s mascot or an encouraging statement for the team members. How does all of the fan support through attendance and pride really affect the game? “The fans are awesome. At the appropriate times, they cheer when you need to hear it,” Utah State University head coach Mick Dennehy said. “I think it’s good for the kids to have the fans out here to support them when they’re working so hard.” “The fans help out a lot, they’re great, they pretty much filled the place up. It’s hard for an opposing team to come in when the fans are that loud,” said junior Kevin Curtis. Freshman middle linebacker Ryan Allred feels the fans really help the team out. “It’s nice to have that kind of student support,” Allred said. There were a record-breaking 28,243 fans in attendance on Saturday night against Oregon, a number exceeded only when BYU or University of Utah come to Logan. What is surprising though, is that not only were there a record-breaking number of fans in attendance, but it seems as though almost half of those were fans from Oregon. “That makes it even more exciting [when there are a lot of fans for the opposing team], because they’re yelling things at you, and our fans are yelling things back at them, and it just makes things fun,” said wide receiver freshman Brian Majors. “If there aren’t that many fans, you really don’t want to try as hard, there’s no reason really, you’re just playing for nobody. When there are a lot of fans and it comes to a crucial moment, the crowd gets you more excited than a quiet crowd would.” “Oregon had a lot of fans, but I think we were still louder,” Curtis said. Even with all the fans, it was surprising to look out into the stadium with five minutes remaining in the game and notice that it was almost empty. How does that affect the team when all of the fans leave before the game is over? “That doesn’t normally happen,” Majors said. “In the game against Wyoming, everyone was there for us until the last second, I guess the fourth quarter [against Oregon] was kind of depressing, so everyone left. I don’t think it bothers us too much.” Eleven very spirited freshmen came to show their support by painting “GO USU AGGIES!” on their chests in blue and white paint. “[We did it to] show school spirit, and hopefully push our team to victory,” said freshman accounting major Scott Dunn. “We want them to see their school is behind them, that’s why we did it. We also hope it helps them improve their game, plus it’s just fun.”