Marquette Should Change Everything About Game Day At Fiserv Forum
· Yahoo Sports
I don’t know if you noticed or not, but Marquette men’s basketball finished the 2025-26 season with a winning percentage of just .375. That’s the worst win-loss ratio for the Golden Eagles since Bob Dukiet was in charge of a 1987-88 season that ended with six straight losses to finish with a record of 10-18 and a winning percentage of just .357.
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And so, quite obviously, head coach Shaka Smart will be looking to move the program that he’s in charge of past that somewhat historically awful performance when the 2026-27 season starts in November. We’ll do more than our fair share of discussion as to exactly what has to happen on the court for that to happen as we move our way through the next several months, so that’s a conversation for a future time.
What we’re here to do today — the first day of the 2026-27 NCAA calendar! New year, new you! — is make the argument that Marquette is in need of more than just on the court changes. Marquette’s 2025-26 season was so bad that I am calling on the administration to take their game presentation script and format and throw it out. Start completely over from scratch. Sever as much connective tissue to last season as you can to the point where when I go to the season opener, it feels like I am attending a completely new and different event.
Blow it up. Blow ALL of it up.
Get rid of the in-game hosts. If you really want to have in-game hosts, okay, but then just get new ones so there’s a change in voices attached to the game.
Get rid of all of the in-game promotions. I’m not naive enough to say “all we need is more Marquette pep band!” even though that is my default position on the topic. I get that the advertising sold on the in-game promotions is useful to the athletic department. I get that there is going to be in-game promotions. I am saying let’s get brand new ones. New mini-games AND new sponsors. If someone’s got a multi-year contract, okay, fine, I’m not advocating for getting sued over violation of contract, but other that: Y’all gotta go.
Get rid of DJ Quadi. To be honest, I could have turned this into its own blog, but it would have come across as out of touch and mean. This gives me the opportunity to make my point quickly and move on: The fact of the matter is that his decision making on mashups is questionable at best, and I am not going to be able to tolerate another season of an inconsistent series of video game noises being played when Marquette makes a free throw. You want to hire some other DJ because there’s gotta be someone that MU is paying to mind the shop on the in-game music? I get it, but change is needed across the board.
Get rid of Thunderstruck right before tip off. It was already starting to become a little bit long in the tooth as a thing that was happening BEFORE Marquette started playing Thunderstruck right before the start of EVERY SINGLE SPORTING EVENT ON CAMPUS. Women’s basketball, soccer, etc., etc., and so on. This is a great opportunity to throw the whole thing in the trash and start over.
Get rid of the poorly rendered CGI eagle video. Look, I get that all the students love the terrible graphics in that clip. I get that there’s a big cheer when they see the bird. I get it. I also remember giggling at the fact that the construction barrels on 12th Street at the time made it into the video AND THEY ARE STILL IN THE VIDEO YEARS LATER. It’s an old video anyway, toss it.
Get rid of Where The Streets Have No Name over the starting lineups. Marquette hasn’t fully played Streets loudly in years and years and years. It’s now reduced to almost backup noise out of some weird connection to tradition that isn’t all that old anyway. Stop wedging it in and do something new.
Stop playing The Star Spangled Banner. There’s no rule or law that says you have to do it, and I don’t see why it has to be played at events at all unless they involve international competition like the World Cup. It started in 1918 during World War I just because, and then it became a tradition. Heck, it’s only been the national anthem since 1931, which is less than 100 years! If you really can’t pull the trigger on this, then let me ask for an addition: Play Lift Every Voice And Sing at every game along with The Star Spangled Banner. If it’s important enough to play Lift Every Voice And Sing during Black History Month, then it’s worth doing it all year long and you know it.
Start over on the ways to use the LED lights on the aisle railings. I know those were just put in a year ago, so what a great time to reassess how they’re used for Marquette games. There’s information and thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, so get to work on making better use of them in the future.
Tell the video company in charge of the starting lineup video package to try harder. I’m not going to argue against having a video, I’m not insane. But we can do a lot more than we’re already doing. Yeah, I get it, there’s a light box in the McGuire Center practice gym, and you projected a bunch of stuff on screens and spun the cameras around, and the players flex and shout, and so on, and so forth, and whatever. How about something creative this time around, a little 30 second movie with a story or something? It’s the 50th anniversary season for the 1977 national championship team, why not add a little historic flair to the whole thing?
Tell the production company in charge of the fire towers on the court during starting lineups that they need to do something new. I get it, it’s an aluminum tower with a flash pot on the top connected to a button via WiFi and it fires after Mike J. announces a player in the starting lineup. Neat. Been seeing it for years. Let’s go, time for something new or, if they don’t have anything else, then it’s time for a new service provider.
Re-think all the arena graphics. The ribbon boards and display screens are permanent fixtures in Fiserv Forum, it would be stupid to not use them. However, we’re heading into Shaka Smart’s sixth year in charge, we can dump all the domino themed graphics and go in a new direction. I’ll be honest here: Most of this is me making a point about all the things you can do to freshen the production up to help a sense of change after last season. I am actually very seriously requesting this item: Fix how kills are displayed on the Fiserv video boards. Which is easier to tell that Marquette has six of the eight kills that Shaka Smart wants to see every game: XXXXXX or XX XX XX or XXX XXX? You see it, right? If you want to keep with the X’s because that’s the handsign from the bench to signal that Marquette has two stops and is going for a third straight, fine, I get it. HOWEVER: You know what would also work even better than XX XX XX? 6! Just put the number on the video board! No one’s going to complain about how easy it is to read!
Stop introducing the student section as “the best student section in the country.” At the very least, stop doing it during winter break games when the students aren’t on campus. We don’t have to be absurd about it. In general, it’s deeply silly to declare the student section is the best and then throw spotlights on the two end zones so we can all see 1) the empty seats and 2) the tarps covering the top few rows of the sections so they don’t look quite as empty. I said it when Marquette was in the Bradley Center, and it’s still true in Fiserv: The student section is too large. Dropping from 4,000-ish seats to 3,000-ish seats has done a world of good….. but that’s still 3,000-ish out of 8,000-ish undergraduate students. It’s hard to get more than a third of the student body to do anything at one time! Until the section is jam packed every single game, stop saying it’s the best section in the country.
Am I advocating for change purely for change’s sake? Yes, 100% that is what is happening here. You know why? Because sometimes you let things go stagnant because “why change, it’s working!” and then you raise ticket prices because of college sports market effects beyond your control and everyone gets mad at you about it even if they’re willing to pay because they love the team and then the team posts their worst record in nearly 40 years and everyone gets even more mad at you and now you have to make lots of changes all at once to lots of different things instead of making constant evaluations about how you can keep maximizing everyone’s enjoyment of your events.
I’m sure I’m missing things that can be changed about the in-arena presentation and programming. What do you want to see changed? Sound off in the comments!
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