Dear athletic director Steve Bilsky:
Sixteen days from now, the men's basketball team will have its first Palestra tip-off of the 2006-07 season. Like many Penn students, that day cannot come soon enough for me.
However, too many students do not know that day is coming at all. It is unfortunate how poorly Penn basketball has been promoted on campus.
Beyond Hey Day, commencement, convocation and Spring Fling, Penn basketball is the best opportunity for Penn students to convene at one place, for one cause.
I am not dismissing other varsity sports. But let us be honest - Penn basketball is the lone Quakers sport that is able to create real excitement on and off campus. It is played in a basketball cathedral, the team is very talented and it faces national competition in a national sport.
Given these circumstances, why aren't more students participating in The Line, attending games and generally aware of what goes on inside the Palestra?
The 8,700-seat arena should be sold out multiple times a year. However, the attendance at the Temple, Colorado and Princeton home games were 7,022, 6,249 and 7,802, respectively. In addition, the Palestra was barely at half-capacity for the first and last Ivy home games against Cornell and Dartmouth.
I was dismayed the other week when a good friend of mine, a senior who had been to many basketball games in the past, asked me how to participate in The Line. It is abominable that a student who has some interest in Penn basketball could be unaware of how The Line works.
You, Mr. Bilsky, played on some of the best teams in Penn history, at a point in time when Penn basketball was not merely relevant to this campus, but to the entire city and to the nation. Why is it that you do not seem to make promoting men's basketball a larger priority for your staff?
The athletics department spent God-knows-how-much money on sticking a toothpick into the Penn "P" and redesigning the Quaker mascot - twice. But, where have the advertisements been for Penn basketball? Certainly not in my mailbox, not even in my e-mail inbox.
To your credit, Brian Head, the marketing coordinator, has worked in new and creative ways to promote the squad, including Facebook.com advertising, flyers on tables in dining halls and working with Penn Student Agencies.
Yet, if you spent just a fraction of the money that you did on enhancing Penn's image to promote basketball, perhaps more students would show up to games.
According to Head, a lot of focus has been given to entertaining students once they get to games and afterwards, including giveaways, music and discounts at Abner's Cheesesteaks.
But it is more important that basketball is made part of the culture and that it becomes alluring to students. The product on the court alone is entertaining enough for the fans once they're actually inside the Palestra's doors - it's getting them there that's the issue.
Just so you know, my expectations are not unrealistic. I do not expect that the Palestra will be sold out for every game, or that the majority of students will show up to even one game, especially when we sometimes play the likes of Dartmouth.
Head noted that Penn blocks 1,000 seats for student season tickets. "Obviously ,we want to maximize student season tickets." Yet only about 750 were sold last year, according to Head.
Is it unreasonable to expect 10 percent of undergraduates and five percent of graduate students to attend not just the exciting games, but all home games? That would be 1,500 students at a game. Imagine, and I know you can, if 2,500 students showed up to Big 5 and Princeton games.
Yeah, I like that thought, too.
Matt Meltzer is a senior political science major from Glen Rock, N.J. His e-mail address is meltzerm@sas.upenn.edu.
