Jeff Lund

When North Texas comes to town Saturday, one thing will be for certain ÷ an already low attendance at Arizona Stadium will drop even more.

Not only will the top deck be scattered with the occasional red shirt, but even down below in the student section and public seating, energy will be lacking.

Plus, if you don't go to the game you won't be able to watch it at all. The game is not televised anywhere.

I have come to notice that at times, football games at the UA are nothing more than a social gathering where guys can stand next to a sweet-smelling female, and the ladies dress up looking to catch a few eyes and hear about what party to go to that night. Usually that party starts around halftime because that's when most people seem to take off.

Most of the time Arizona Stadium is pathetically quiet öö resembling more of a neutral site than that of a Pac-10 school.

Maybe that's just Tucson. Maybe Tucson is too indifferent to get crazy.

Oh how intimidating I am sure it is to come into Arizona and hear the sound of 40 to 50,000 crazy red shirt wearing fans · standing.

We jingle our keys and talk.

So what if our team is not Tennessee, Florida or Oregon? For a few games in the fall we get the chance to harass, yell, scream, stomp and just be nasty.

Why does the passion for our school not apply to our football team? It sure does for basketball, at least in the student section.

It's less than 10 bucks to come to a game ÷ even half that if you buy season tickets ÷ for that you can be as raw and loud as you want. All of that built up aggression and frustration collected from late nights studying and sitting through mind-numbing lectures can be let go in a catharsis of screaming.

But we would rather show up late, leave early and BS with the people next to us in between. It's not Dodger Stadium, people.

We have a stadium with over 56,000 seats, and we can only get 40,000 and change to come to our Homecoming game last year against a ranked opponent.

We were still in the hunt for a bowl game, and all it seemed it would have taken was a little support to push our team back in the hunt. But we were too concerned with other things and couldn't make it to the game.

That is just sad. That's more than sad, that is sad with any expletive in front of it.

We're not "stuck" with this team, and we should stop dreaming about how cool it would be to have a team like Florida State or Virginia Tech. If nothing else the games should be more exiting to us, because we don't have the type of team that is going to put up 85 points a game öö yet.

It shouldn't matter to us anyway, though.

If we are looking for a reason to drink and party, what better than game day? If we're such a big party school, why can't Saturday evenings work into our plans?

This football season, and every other season, will be what we make of it. We can bitch and moan about the losses and stop going, or we can get crazy and support our team. Then, looking back we can say, "That was the best, most fun 5-6, 6-5, 7-4 (or whatever record we end up with) season ever."

It's up to you. But you can bet, when it's time to jingle the keys, there will be no doubt as to where I'll be.

Fifty yard line, baby.