By. Brett Greenberg
The University of Alabama Student Government Association (SGA) and UA Athletic Department have come up with a new incentive program to encourage UA students to attend all home football games while also offering more incentives to those who stay until the fourth quarter.
Over the years, Bryant Denny Stadium (BDS) has seen a decline in student attendance for football games.
“This has been in the works for a couple of semesters,” said Jason Rothfarb, vice president of Student Affairs for SGA. “I have noticed that ever since my freshman year there has been a decline in student involvement at BDS and we think Tide Loyalty Points will get rid of that problem.”
At the end of the regular season, each student’s total amount of points is added up and then students with more points will have a better chance of getting lottery seats for postseason conference championship games and/or bowl games. The postseason includes the South Eastern Conference (SEC) Championship and the following bowl game the Crimson Tide play in.
This incentive program is in the first year of existence and the response to it has been two sided.
There is a large group of UA students who feel as if it is no big deal.
“This is just the school trying to get us to stay at the games and stay for longer,” said Aaron Kaboff, a senior at UA. “If you really care about the team, it should not make a difference to anyone.”
The school has a set number of points that is gifted to each student. For attending the game, the typical student will receive 100 Tide Loyalty Points, while a student will earn additional 350 Tide Loyalty Points for staying until the fourth quarter.
The mantra known throughout campus, “Play for four, stay for four,” is displayed here. The university is trying to incentivize staying for all four quarters to support the players and coaches of the beloved Alabama Crimson Tide.
For Tide Loyalty Points to be gifted to each student, the student must have his/her location services on for SGA to confirm. There are three options while in the app for tracking. The first option is to “never track”, the second is “only track while using app” and the third is “always track.”
“People who are complaining about our school tracking us all the time are just not tech savvy,” said Max Wolborsky, a freshman at UA. “I just have the app never track my location and then log into the app when I am at the game so I know I will get my points.”
There is also a large group of students who believe that the Tide Loyalty Points tracking app is a breach of privacy and the university should not be able to have access to its students’ locations.
“I go to the games; I always stay four quarters and I always cheer on the tide with my location services off,” said Aerin Cantor, a sophomore at UA. “I just do not see why Alabama needs to have access to our location, if people don’t go to the game, that’s their own fault.”
At the beginning of the season, the Tide Loyalty Points app was deemed inefficient. The application was reported to crash over thousands of times on the first gameday and thousands of students were not gifted with the possible points of anywhere from 100 to 450 points.
The first game day brought upon an explosion of people knocking the loyalty program because it was deemed “unsafe.” The first gameday had reported temperatures of over 100 degrees and students felt the need to stay for the points and many students experienced health issues from the heat.
As the year has progressed, the program has had little problems in regard to getting each student the respective earned points. The total points tab on the app seems to have brought on competition competing for the most points.
The program also gifts students with points based off of the amount of UA earned credit hours so people who do not attend or unable to attend all of the home games can still receive a type of reward. Students who do not like the idea of being tracked by UA will still be able to be involved in this new program.
University of Alabama officials and SGA members seem to be very happy with the development of the app and the incentive program and UA students can expect to have the same type of program come next fall or next football season.
For more information on the new Tide Loyalty Points incentive program: https://rolltide.com/sports/2019/5/27/tide-loyalty-points.aspx
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