The Syracuse men’s basketball team goes on an 8-0 run. The Carrier Dome crowd jumps up and down, a real wave of orange seems to form around Jim Boeheim Court. The noise level becomes louder and louder, so loud you can’t hear yourself scream.

The frustrated opposing head coach calls a time out. The ecstasy in the Carrier Dome couldn’t go any higher.

Then it happens.

Hey fans. When the Orange pulls down 35 or more rebounds at a home game, bring your ticket stub into any participating Advance Auto Parts and say the phrase that pays, ‘Clean the Glass,’ to receive a free gallon of windshield washer fluid.

The Dome deflates so much someone must have left one of the emergency exits open.

Students who’ve written letters to The D.O. attacked the athletic department for the reoccurrence of that scenario not only throughout the season but throughout games, like the above hypothetical. The attacks increased after the Orange’s game against Connecticut on Feb. 17 when some students ended up sitting in the upper deck in the seats furthest from the court.

‘When you watch other games, you don’t see any ads,’ senior public relations major Adam Streicher said. ‘The (Carrier Dome) is very different from other schools. In the pros, they have music playing during the game and they bombard you with ads. College is supposed to be the band playing and the students jumping around. It doesn’t help when you have an ad for washer fluid after a big play.

‘Not only does it hurt the team, it hurts the school. Everyone knows the Carrier Dome. But the building is so corporate, it kills the atmosphere. I wouldn’t call the crowd intimidating.’

While advertisements certainly hurt the so-called ‘atmosphere’ in the Carrier Dome, officials in the athletic department claim the situation isn’t as dire as the critics insist. There are actually less advertisements during men’s basketball games this year compared with years past, Director of Athletics Daryl Gross said.

Numerous requests to the athletic department for the actual statistics were acknowledged but unfulfilled.

Not only were there fewer ads this basketball season, according to the athletic department, but the band played more. The Sour Sitrus Society pep band received more playing time than last year, said John Sorriento, the band’s chairman. Sorriento, via e-mail, declined to comment further due to media restrictions placed on band members.

Without knowing how much advertising has decreased and band playing time has increased, it is difficult to come to a full conclusion. But based on unofficial tallies I took at Monday’s Syracuse-Georgetown game, there seems to be lots of room for advertisements, school spirit and compromise.

In the 25 minutes before the game, the Sour Sitrus Society played almost eight minutes, advertisements consumed just less than nine minutes and the National Anthem, player introductions, the Senior Night ceremony and dead air used up the remaining time.

From tip-off to the final buzzer, there were 32 advertisements (repeated ads can count more than once), 12 sets from the band and six promotional games.

Gross said advertisements are necessity, but the gameday staff strives to entice an ‘up-tempo, slightly chaotic’ edge at the Carrier Dome despite those ads. The staff has choreographed the entire game and will play certain music and a certain number of advertisements based on the game situation.

So, back to that imaginary 8-0 run. Gross said he thinks he has the situation covered.

‘Say if we go on an 8-0 run,’ Gross said. ‘I have purposely carved out 30 seconds where we could’ve had a promo where we have some kind of music or the band. We get the fans back into it, but also have our promo.’

The ad-then-band method tries to lead fans back into the game. The method worked at the Georgetown game, but there still has to be a better way to do it.

A game at Syracuse will never be like one at North Carolina’s Dean Smith Center, where the ads are so few and far between fans don’t even notice them.

Promotions are limited to a few companies, and the fans’ cheers and championship banners create enough ‘college atmosphere’ to block the advertisements out, said Stefan Ringel, a junior at UNC. When UNC head coach Roy Williams appeared in a local television ad, Tar Heel fans became irate, Ringel said.

UNC has its own problems, though. A new online lottery system determined which students received tickets to Tar Heels’ games. Students chose which lotteries to enter and were rewarded tickets based on luck of the draw. The lotteries were for game packages including as few as one game or as many as three. Ringel said he entered every lottery this semester and his name was never pulled. He attended one game this year after a friend gave him a ticket.

Paying $150 doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?

But once students get into the Dome, there’s plenty they can do to keep the excitement of the game at the forefront and the advertisements in the background.

Even Gross acknowledged there is plenty students can do to change the situation, pointing to a story he heard of a student-run football pep rally at SU in 1927. The whole purpose of the rally was to teach cheers and chants so the students knew them for the game.

At Kansas, chants of ‘Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk’ cascade throughout Allen Fieldhouse during basketball games. Now more than 100 years old, the chant is engrained in KU lore. Still, it had to start somewhere.

Now that the ‘Hey Song’ is out of the student section’s system following a rowdy rendition minutes after the Georgetown game, it’s time to move on and be creative. If the advertisements won’t stop, the best SU students can do is chant over them and create excitement in spite of the ads.

There’s no way around the fact that the Carrier Dome is commercialized, even in its very name. But simply complaining about it will not solve the problem. Instead, students need to organize and propose alternatives to keep the band-playing, student-section-jumping atmosphere in the Carrier Dome alive and well.

Or we can continue to sit back and hope the Orange pulls down 35 rebounds. Your choice.

Rob Anthes is an assistant sports editor emeritus at The Daily Orange, where his columns usually appear on Wednesdays. E-mail him at rmanthes@syr.edu.

Published on February 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm