Why Do People Go?

Why do people go to football games?

The answer, fundamentally, is simple.

People go to football games because people go to football games. The history feeds into the present. At a big high school, there might be 5,000-10,000 fans in the stands for a Friday night game (or many more in Texas!). It’s family and friends of the players and the marching band, to be sure, but it’s also people who remember the last time they won states, and people who played on the team 25 years ago, and people who have been coming to games since they moved to town, and people who are new to town but heard this is a great family event and people who don’t like football but love being in the crowd and people who just needed an excuse to be outdoors on a fall evening.

Most of them went to the game because they, or people like them, went to the last game. It snowballed. It’s not inherently football, or inherently the school musical, or anything else. It’s a tradition that people adopt just because it’s a tradition.

If you want more people to buy into what you love, you’ve got to find a way to build a tradition. It doesn’t just happen…it gets built.