re: Rabalais: Empty seats reflect poorly on LSU

There are a lot of major issues with LSU's games and a large part of it is that Baton Rouge has changed.

Baton Rouge is getting more and more populated. Near-campus housing (Tigerland) had a lot of apartments converted to section 8 housing.

LSU used to have 8 homes games a year maybe 6 of which were big games. Now it is 7 with 3 bad games guaranteed.

Parking spots are reduced with expansion and lack of public transportation has been a huge issue.

More day games has hurt the build up for games. A lot of people that used to drive in the night before to tailgate all day Saturday, simply come in the day of the game and all at once. That hurts.

In the end, SEC fans have to realize that the SEC, while a great conference isn't as big nationally and thus CBS doesn't care to air primetime SEC games unless its a huge matchup. They simply don't get the ratings.

In the end, there are some potential alternatives to improve things:

1) Have off-site parking with shuttles available. Charge $5 per car for parking and $4 per person for the shuttle trip to and from the stadium. Then shuttles can bring these people during the game and reduce traffic. This can be done at the River Center/downtown parking or even with the banks down there.

2) Limit tailgating. Yes, I said it. LSU's campus shouldn't simply be there for a bunch of people to camp out and watch the game. This doesn't mean people without a ticket can tailgate, but if 50% of people tailgate and don't go to the game, that's an issue.

3) Force BR police to do their jobs. I lived right by campus most of my life and it sucked when traffic went only one way on parts of Highland, but we understood what times that would happen. People simply adjusted their schedule. If people want to bitch about it, just ignore them.