How the Student Body Is Affected by ASU Football

I am a former Arizona State football player and I wanted to do my own research on how the ASU football program affects the student body. I believe that college football is one of the great experiences for any student. This is why I wanted to see what the students think about the football program at ASU and if I could find ways to make their experience better. I looked into past studies to find that there are many positive correlations between successful college football programs and student life. Studies indicated that it is beneficial for universities to invest in their football programs. To study this at ASU I created a survey that asked ASU students a few questions about themselves and how they felt ASU football affected their day-to-day lives through a Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree format. I then put in a response portion at the end if they wanted to suggest anything that could be done better for the ASU football program when it came to their students. The results that I received from the survey showed that the students cared about football and that they thought football was an overall positive experience for them. The alarming point that the survey brought up was that not many students were attending the home games during the season. In fact, 25% of the student respondents did not go to a single home game in 2016. This was troubling to me and I looked in the worded responses to get answers as to why this was happening. Fortunately, the student respondents were very descriptive in what they believed the football program could be doing better. The responses discussed how a lack of tradition, lack of community outreach, lack of incentives/emphasis on fan experience and more were the reasons as to why students did not feel like going to the home games. I concluded that in order for ASU to attract more students to the home games that they need to have more student events around game week, reach out to the students more through their players, and built a connect between the football team and the ASU student body.