BYU football: Five odd questions going into the 2017 season

Question 3: Will the ROC section come back?

In 2015, the ROC section (The BYU student section “Roar of Cougars”)  was constantly being praised about the noise and energy that they brought during the football games. The coaches, players and even ESPN commentators all made remarks about this in interviews and via social media. That all changed however in 2016. Despite there being bigger games, the noise level and energy just was not the same.

In 2016 the ROC board decided to change up the way that students could get in line. Rather than having students camp out and enter as a first come first serve, the ROC decided to have ROC line card drops. This meant that on Thursday evening the ROC announced a certain spot on campus where there would be a drop off. At that time students would rush to that spot and get their card 1-750+. This decided where they ended up in line on the condition that they had to camp out the night before.

This resulted in people no longer able to camp out three or four nights to get the front row, but rather more of a game of luck as to who was able to get the first drop off cards. This resulted in less energy and less “true fans” on the front rows of the football games. It did however, keep people from camping out all week.

Whether or not the ROC will do this is again is still unknown. Perhaps there will be some kind of new system put in place. Let’s just hope though that the biggest fans do find a way back up front to help the energy go back up again.