Pep rally moves to Stadium to accommodate expected crowd
By Anne Marie Mattingly
News Editor
Today's pep rally will be held in the stadium instead of the Joyce Center to accommodate the large crowds expected, said John Heisler, director of Sports Information.
"Essentially it's just because of the tremendous demand that we expect to have for access. We reserve `X' number of seats for students and other special guests, and that only leaves 4,000 seats for the general public," he said. "The amount of interest in this game seemed to suggest that there will be [30,000] or 40,000 people who want to come to the game. … We felt that we might be disappointing or upsetting more people than we would be making happy by having it indoors."
Rumors have been circulating that Nebraska fans purchased so many tickets for the 4 p.m. volleyball game that they would fill the Joyce Center and that there would be no room for Notre Dame fans at pep rally time. Heisler denied that this was the reasoning behind the decision to move the rally, stating that tickets were not sold for volleyball.
"Tickets were going to be distributed [as] an internal control mechanism to determine how many people had been admitted to the building," he said. "We expected the reserved seats to be used by the students and the groups that have access to those … [but] at some point you've got to know when to close the doors."
Heisler does not anticipate that Nebraska fans will disrupt tonight's rally.
"The suggestion we've heard is that Nebraska fans are tremendously hospitable. I haven't heard anything from anybody not suggesting that their fans are great," he said. "And how many of them are really going to be in town? … We've heard all these suggestions that there are going to be `X' number of people coming to down even if they don't have tickets, but [we don't know how many there will be]."
Instead of opening the rally to additional Nebraska fans, holding it in the stadium may increase Notre Dame support, Heisler said. Concerns about being able to get a seat may have deterred such fans from attending rallies held in the Joyce Center, but will not prove a problem tonight, he explained.
"I think the whole idea that people will understand that it's wide open and you're going to have no problem getting a seat would, you hope, encourage people," he said. "I'm sure there's plenty of people here in town that might be interested in coming to something like this."
Heisler said that students will still receive the best seating, despite the change in venue. The stadium gates will open at 5:30; students should enter gate E, while the general public should go to gates C and D.
All News Stories for Friday, September 8, 2000
