ACU needs new ways for its students to reach the magical 55 Chapel credit number to prevent the year-end Chapel rush. The solution is simple: give ACU students Chapel credits for attending sporting events.
It makes perfect sense – students need more credits and athletes need more fans at their games. Moody Coliseum is great, but it looks kind of dumb when we have 350 people in a 5,000-seat arena for a basketball game. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
For basketball games, students could slide in five minutes before the game, in between each quarter and slide out after the final buzzer. For volleyball, fans could slide in after each set. The multiple slide-ins would go a long way toward preventing people from leaving early.
Chapel credits for the outdoor events are a bit trickier, but football already has student ID checks at the entrance; why not slide in and out? Soccer, softball, tennis and baseball could use the same system.
You could get two credits for sitting through the entire sporting event. For the cynics who say students wouldn’t go to regular Chapel, ACU could cap the number of credits that students could gain at sporting events.
Giving students an incentive to go to sporting events (besides ACU’s great teams) would be a step toward energizing the Wildcat faithful. ACU sports would benefit, and the university image would improve if we had more enthusiastic students.
Some will likely say students will abuse the system and slide in for their friends. This is probably true but not a reason to discount the idea. Students do the same thing in Moody for regular Chapel. Chapel only works if a little bit of trust is involved and a belief that ACU students value integrity.
If this idea is too extreme, why not offer credits a few nights a semester for rivalry games? It would be amazing to have 3,000 fans in Moody when the Tarleton Texans come to town for a basketball game.
Many students will attend the games just for the credits, but others are likely to be hooked by the thrill of ACU athletics. It’s amazing what a buzzer-beater can do to re-energize a fan base – and maybe fans will start coming for the love of the game.
