Rosetta: Fans should give PMAC sizzle

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jan 14, 2009 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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It’s like a winter rite of passage in these parts.

The LSU football season reaches a familiar crescendo with a bowl game, yet the Pete Maravich Assembly Center remains conspicuously half-full (officially, only a third-full in reality) until the Southeastern Conference season begins.

Then when the first longstanding rivalries of the South start to unfold, a few more hearty folks show up at the PMAC. But rarely does the old building fill up — only once in the last four years that I know of for sure.

A ready-made excuse the last several years was growing unrest for former coach John Brady. Last time I checked, Brady was coaching at Arkansas State.

It’s always struck me as strange that a fan base that is among the best in college football and arguably the absolute best in college baseball takes a hiatus for a few months between those two sports.

Not everyone, of course. There are die-hard basketball fans. But to borrow a page from new LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva, what’s with all the no-shows so far this season and in recent memory?

It’s head-scratching that there are 6,900 season tickets sold and the Tigers are averaging only slightly more than 4,400 fans per home game.

If you have the discretionary funds set aside to pay for a ticket, why spend that cash if you aren’t going to use it? I can’t imagine making a car payment on a car I don’t drive or only drive occasionally.

Alleva’s plea Tuesday was that if you have a ticket and can’t use it, give it to a friend or sell it. There’s even an Online venue on the LSU athletic department’s Web site, the Ticket Marketplace.

Filling up the PMAC matters to Alleva for obvious reasons. Part of his job is to make sure the LSU cash register hums and purrs.

Alleva’s frame of reference makes it tough to stomach what he has seen so far this season: A basketball arena barely a third full. He watched Duke’s program take flight for 33 years and had a front-row seat for how big a difference a lively Cameron Indoor Stadium made.

Think it doesn’t make a difference? Arkansas, Florida and Kentucky are the three most daunting SEC arenas for visiting teams for very similar reasons. All three are generally filled to the brim with jazzed-up fans who generate a ton of electricity.

Same thing happens at the PMAC when you get enough bodies in there. It just doesn’t happen often enough.