Auburn convenes football fan focus group on gameday experience at Jordan-Hare

Auburn is once again asking its football fans for advice on how to improve the gameday experience at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The school convened focus group discussions last month, where participants asked for more information about out-of-town scores from stadium announcers, instructions on where to go in case of severe weather, a call for opposing fans spread through the facility, and a call for the return of paper shakers.

They also inquired about why certain games had early kickoff times, though that is dictated by television needs, the school said.

"As television gets better with high definition and the amenities at your own house, certainly one of the challenges we all face in college athletics is encouraging fans to keep coming to campus," said Scott Carr, Auburn's senior associate athletics director for external affairs, in a statement posted on the school's athletics website. "That's one of the main reasons the gameday experience is such a point of emphasis for us as well as our peers."

In previous roundtable discussions, fans raised objections about the high price of bottled water and the school's dated audio and video systems.

Auburn responded by cutting the price of bottled water from $4 to $2 and, perhaps more significantly, invested $13 million in improving their audio and video systems.

Jordan-Hare Stadium is now home to college football's largest video board, which will be formally introduced at Auburn's first home game this season against Jacksonville State on Sept. 12.

"The hot button items that came from that were the price of bottle water, we certainly heard a lot of feedback about the sound system and the video board," Carr said of earlier fan feedback. "Those were three items we had on our radar to work on."