Will the game day experience go FBS too?

[rooneyguy]

As UD enters the promised land of FBS, will the band follow suit and entertain the crowd throughout the game to reduce the need to pipe in "noise"? Or do all FBS bands take the third quarter off? Asking for a friend.

[Chicken of War]

I'm fine with the 3rd because the horns & tubas entertain in the stands and that's one of my favorite par5s of GameDay. What I hate is sending the drum line off for the entire 2nd quarter to "warm up" and then not playing in the 3rd. I don't know that I've ever seen another college band do that. Most just walk down with the rest of the band right before halftime.

[jd of de]

The game day experience is going FBS.

… You won’t know the kickoff time of the 1st game until April or May.
… You won’t know kickoff time for the 2nd & 3rd games until June.
… Kickoff time for all the other games will be announced 12 days prior to the game.
… The commercial time countdown clock will be present every game.
… Games that once took 2:50 will now take 3:20.

Welcome to FBS football. Plan (or is it unplan) accordingly.

[cams]

Well said JD.

Welcome to new world of ESPN TV revenue.

[HENJOHN]

The game day experience is going FBS.

… You won’t know the kickoff time of the 1st game until April or May.
… You won’t know kickoff time for the 2nd & 3rd games until June.
… Kickoff time for all the other games will be announced 12 days prior to the game.
… The commercial time countdown clock will be present every game.
… Games that once took 2:50 will now take 3:20.

Welcome to FBS football. Plan (or is it unplan) accordingly.

Good stuff and very true. All part of the Transition

[Roger_Podacter]

I would assume it would.

Less yackety yack and cheesiness, maybe, for future home games? I can only speak to what I see and hear on TV for the big boy games, and I definitely see and hear the teams Bands involved.

[UD '01 grad]

I'm fine with the 3rd because the horns & tubas entertain in the stands and that's one of my favorite par5s of GameDay. What I hate is sending the drum line off for the entire 2nd quarter to "warm up" and then not playing in the 3rd. I don't know that I've ever seen another college band do that. Most just walk down with the rest of the band right before halftime.

CoW is speaking the truth here.

[Cluck U]

UD will need to implement cost savings at first until revenues rise.

The marching band will be replaced by a group of middle school harmonica players. There will be a tip jar at the entrance.

[Warrior Hen]

Moving to the FBS is great! There will be growing pains but we will be much better off. I am definitely not sad that future Hen teams will not be ending their season in a cold isolated location like Montana or South Dakota.

[dovetail]

Heidi's gone. Maybe a new band director has different ideas.

[TrueBlueHen]

Heidi's gone. Maybe a new band director has different ideas.

So sad that Heidi is leaving us. As a former UD marching band member (74-79), I can say she did an excellent job of keeping the UDMB tradition going! I will miss her halftime shows. Hopefully, the new band director will be as good as Heidi was. Thanks, Heidi!

[Baltimore Hen]

Heidi's gone. Maybe a new band director has different ideas.

Music to my ears....no pun intended! she is the worst "Football band leader" maybe she is good for competitions and concerts, but for football games her approach is just terrible

[bluehens2005]

Heidi's gone. Maybe a new band director has different ideas.

Music to my ears....no pun intended! she is the worst "Football band leader" maybe she is good for competitions and concerts, but for football games her approach is just terrible

While I agree there could have been a better balance at times the reason she operates the band the way she does is a lot of the band members are music majors. Some schools for not offer that degree and band is purely for fun and entertainment. She is operating the band to teach future music education leaders about marching band and competitive style of marching and fundamentals so they can go on to teach competitive high school bands for a career. I do hope that we keep a lot of our traditions, but perhaps some more playing in the stands of relevant music etc. not everything they do is dictated by her either the game day operations folks have scripted them into when they can and can not play so they can have their many announcements and advertisements and piped in scripted music we hear the same thing week after week because their playlist
Is scripted ( piped in music) and to an extent the band. So hopefully the operations folks will take some of the handcuffs and scripted game day approach away and let it flow!

[Gannonfan]

Heidi's gone. Maybe a new band director has different ideas.

Music to my ears....no pun intended! she is the worst "Football band leader" maybe she is good for competitions and concerts, but for football games her approach is just terrible

While I agree there could have been a better balance at times the reason she operates the band the way she does is a lot of the band members are music majors. Some schools for not offer that degree and band is purely for fun and entertainment. She is operating the band to teach future music education leaders about marching band and competitive style of marching and fundamentals so they can go on to teach competitive high school bands for a career. I do hope that we keep a lot of our traditions, but perhaps some more playing in the stands of relevant music etc. not everything they do is dictated by her either the game day operations folks have scripted them into when they can and can not play so they can have their many announcements and advertisements and piped in scripted music we hear the same thing week after week because their playlist
Is scripted ( piped in music) and to an extent the band. So hopefully the operations folks will take some of the handcuffs and scripted game day approach away and let it flow!

I say this a fan who actually liked Heidi and thought the band, largely, was very good. While some things about the band were good (they played fantastically - being a fan now over 50 years, there's simply no doubt that the band sounds infinitely better now than it did back in the golden days of the 80's), there were far too many things that made you scratch your head:
- why do big chunks of the band start leaving the stands at the 10 minute mark of the second quarter to get ready for halftime? Back when the band was in the West Stands in sec B that made sense, but after they got their spot in the endzone with the dedicated and big sets of stairs with easy access to the field, it stopped making sense.
- the lack of in-the-stands music got better over the past several years, but still needs to be increased.
- I'm fine with the 3rd quarter - having the trumpets/trombones and the tubas go around the stadium is a great tradition, having the drums do drumlines under the stands is a newer one but still good. But the rest of the band could still do something in the stands during that quarter.
- The biggest pet peeve I had was the band no longer doing the traditional fight song while marching under the stands. Sure, I get it that post-renovation you couldn't do it under the West Stands, but the East Stands are exactly like what they used to march under and it could be done there. Shame to just lose this tradition. Bringing this back would be a great step.
- Why'd they change the pre-game stuff on the field? Doing the alma mater right after the national anthem feels rushed. The old way of old fight song, then national anthem, then current fight song ending in the block UD, and then the alma mater was much better. Not sure why it changed.
- For a band that supposedly is now more music majors, why did we cancel the live vocals with the national anthem and alma mater? We always used to have vocal majors sing those during the pre game and then we just stopped doing that. Bring that back.
- On a side note to all of this, high school bands seem to have gone down that same, strange, uber-competitive tunnel that other sports have done with so much travel and AAU stuff. It's not a coincidence that you see smaller and smaller high school bands as a result. It's a crazy time committment (there's no restriction on band practice hours like there are on sports) and it's not as wide appealing. Maybe it should be more fun?

[Randy Marsh]

I will be in the College Gameday crowd when they come to Newark haha.

But seriously, yes some things will change and sure some will be annoyed at first with some of them, but its all for the good. Been to plenty of FBS games myself(A cousin of mine played at UNC) so I will say a great experience from the bands and everything else.