Football season for students at southern schools is a huge deal: students look forward to football games from the end of the season until it starts back up again. Throwback Thursdays and Flashback Fridays are dedicated to remembering the last season and counting down the next.

There is so much hype for the season, and that’s a great thing. The excitement for football survives spring semester up until the start of the first game, but disappears at about halftime every game after that.   

A typical game day begins with the inevitable morning mimosas (for snap chat purposes, of course) and the ritual of putting on face tattoos with your friends. After a slow start, you eventually show up late to the closest tailgate to play catch-up as quickly as you can before shuffling into the stadium. Once you finally make it into the stadium, you push your way through the student section (if you can even make it in with the one-in, one-out system) and watch the game until you are too hot to stay or you realize it’s halftime, whichever comes first.   

After attending three semesters of game days, I thought bailing out early was normal for college; people tailgate too hard, or not hard enough, and find themselves at the nearest bar or nearest bed come halftime. It was recently brought to my attention that this is just a TCU thing. As I looked into why, I found that it isn’t a shortage or abundance of alcohol that is causing the drop in attendance at halftime. It is something far beyond:

The TCU ratio.   

For any of you who are unaware, the ratio of males to females at TCU is 41% male to 59% female. It may just be me, but the lack of men seems like it could have an effect on TCU’s empty student section after halftime. Because there are so many more girls at TCU, when we inevitably bail at halftime, all that remains are the minimal number of dedicated male football fans. Whether girls leave because they’re too hot or because they’d rather drink beer at a bar, their absence leaves the student section empty. Whatever the reason for leaving may be, there is no denying the effect it has on attendance.   

Now this isn’t some sexist article claiming that girls don’t like football or are clueless when it comes to sports. I was the hydration specialist (a.k.a. the water girl) for my high school football team, so staying an entire game is not a new idea to me. I fully support women enjoying sports, but I also believe we may lack the motivation to stay if the game isn’t tied at half. I would like to make a statement on behalf of myself (for fear I can’t speak for all women at this school): we get bored and we change our minds. Even though we start the morning vowing we will stay the entire time, if we watch the first half of the game at the stadium and then decide we want to watch the other half at a bar, that is what we are going to do.   

The problem here is one that can be described by one of my favorite old time sayings: you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you like the ratio imbalance, you have to deal with the consequences. Men, that means if you want to continue to be outnumbered by beautiful women, you have to deal with them leaving at halftime (or get better at entertaining us to keep us around). 

The only possible solution would be for the ratio to balance out. Although I would have preferred for this to have happened about three years ago, it's better late than never, as they always say!

TCU’s student section attendance at halftime would increase drastically if only more men attended this university. So, let’s start recruiting some frog football-loving men!