COLUMBIA, Mo. — The music cut off as the broadcast returned from a commercial break, but the fans were on their feet and not quite ready to stop the sing-along.
On Feb. 1 at Mizzou Arena as Missouri men’s basketball faced LSU, “Mr. Brightside” — that 19-year-old tune that has become the not-quite-love letter to Missouri’s western neighbor and fierce foe — was about to get one more alternate chorus.
A capella and unfiltered, anyone with the volume turned up above a whisper on their television heard the two-word, three-syllable, six-letter mass chant, just like every visiting team in the 2022-23 season subjected to the bench below The Zou — MU’s student section.
The lyrics can’t be printed. They sometimes draw criticism for being off color. But the noise, the phones that shot up around the arena to grab a memento and the announcers who couldn’t stymie a chuckle were indicative of something far larger.
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There is life at Mizzou Arena again.
That’s been a long time coming.
It also wasn’t happenstance. Under athletics director Desireé Reed-Francois, Missouri athletics opened up its eager ears.
Tony Daniel, MU’s associate director of athletics for marketing and fan experience, leads a team of five full-time employees, a larger department than at any point prior, with a focus on improving the Tiger game day experience. He said Reed-Francois’ arrival spearheaded a mindset shift, one that focused on listening to the supporters.
Daniel’s goal is simple: From leaving the driveway to get to the games to driving home after it’s all said and done, he wants the experience to be as “best as possible and as fun as possible for Tigers fans.”
To get that rolling, the athletics department sent out surveys asking how they could improve the game day experience across all sports.
“We took an active listening approach and rolled the surveys out,” Daniel said. “It wasn’t just going to be, ‘OK, we’re taking this information, and we’re gonna try to fix one thing.’ It was, ‘How can we make this completely better, top of the SEC experience whenever you come to any of our sporting events, how can we make it to the top of the SEC?’”
The numbers suggest that’s in motion.
Per information provided in an open records request, Mizzou Arena, which has a capacity of 15,061, averaged 3,399 scanned tickets (an indicator of true attendance) at men’s basketball games in the 2021-22 season. That was down from 7,109 in the 2017-18 season — former coach Cuonzo Martin‘s first season at the helm.
In Dennis Gates‘ first year, seven games have sold out. The average announced attendance through 18 home games this season has been 11,377. That ranks fourth in the SEC and 31st across Division I.
Daniel said his department had a top-10 list of goals for the football game day experience and a top-five list for basketball. Those areas for improvement extended to parking issues, improving concessions, and reducing the number of sponsored commercials throughout the game, among others.
But perhaps most important for Daniel, the athletics department opened up channels of communication with Missouri’s student body. The department now has somebody specifically dedicated to student engagement — Madison Weilbacher — and that has paid dividends.
One change was football-centric, altering the student section at Memorial Stadium so that all students were seated together. The noise on nights like the near-upset of Georgia was proof enough to Daniel that it was a successful move.
During men’s basketball games, there’s seldom been a spare inch in Mizzou Arena’s student section all season, including the timid nonconference slate when students were incentivized to attend with a points-based system for tickets to the Dec. 10 Kansas game.
“Our students were telling us a lot of things that we (couldn’t always get to), just being short staffed and things like that,” Daniel said. “But now having a full staff, having someone solely dedicated to students, it’s been great to listen to them to see where they are and build a great community with them.”
Of course, the revival is also spurred by the not-so-small matter of the on-court product.
Missouri has won 22 games — the most since the Frank Haith-led 2012-13 team. MU’s 81-76 win at LSU on Wednesday was its 10th in conference play, the most since Martin’s first year as coach in 2017-18.
Daniel’s next goal is to translate the success over to Missouri’s Olympic sports. Both gymnastics and wrestling recently set meet attendance records, which he sees as trickle-down from the revenue sports’ successes. The department recently met to discuss across-the-board improvements they can make to next season’s events.
But before any of that takes place, there’s one more basketball game at Mizzou Arena. The Tigers face Ole Miss at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday on Norm Stewart Court — also another sellout.
The game will air on SEC Network, but the real party will be in person.
Take it from someone who has seen a few games in his time — 1,000, to be exact.
“I think it’s completely trending in the right direction,” said Mike Kelly, the radio voice of Missouri basketball, who on Wednesday called his 1,000th MU game, dating back to 1991. “I think there’s a foundation that’s being built. There’s a relationship that’s being rekindled between the program and its fan base. I think that there’s a respect that’s being developed among its peers. I’m really excited about what the future holds.
“Somebody said to me recently, ‘What does it feel like to be relevant again?’ You don’t realize how much you miss it until you realize it’s happening again.”