As attendance figures at college football venues across the country continue to decline, administrators are trying to figure out why fans aren't coming. As the great Yogi Berra once said, "If people don't want to come to the ball park, how are you going to stop them?"

Athletic directors point to high definition television and the fact that nearly every game is televised, but that's only part of the problem. The source of the problem are the AD's themselves--the pursuit of the next buck at the expense of the gameday experience. The gameday experience is no longer about the game or the university, it's about money, and the replacement of the university by the dollar as the object of admiration bleeds from every aspect of the modern college gameday experience. In their ruthless pursuit to monetize every aspect of the game, AD's will ultimately end up homogenizing it, and in the process trading away what makes each university experience unique for 30 pieces of silver.

Increasingly, universities no longer even control their own stadium experiences. Many universities have sold the rights to control the stadium experience to media companies. IMG and CBS dominate the industry, representing nearly every university in major college athletics. These advertising firms put their own "gameday coordinators" in the stadiums to control the gameday experience. They control what is shown on the jumbotron, when the band plays, what cheers are done, what music is blasted over the speakers, and what stream of ads will come at you.

Bands, cheerleaders, drill teams, those things aren't controlled by IMG or CBS and can't drive their profits. The solution--minimize them as much as possible. Basically, the university agrees to cannibalize itself. No pushback will be tolerated. After taking his concerns about the contant rise of canned music public, Tennessee's band director, Dr. Gary Sousa, was reassigned for pushing back against the profit monster.

Tennessee isn't alone. It's everywhere, and the SEC is making it easier than ever to inundate fans with canned music and a tidal wave of advertisements. Before last season, the SEC relaxed the rules for when music and advertising can be played between plays. Now, the home team can play this stuff until the QB is over the ball. The SEC, at the urging of Georgia, adopted the rule because the ACC has something similar, probably to paper over terrible gameday atmospheres.

These media conglomerates don't make money by making each stadium experience unique; they make money by using the same stuff everywhere, which lowers the cost to deliver it. The necessary result is that the gameday experience is being homogenized--making the experience at any particular stadium much like the experience anywhere else. What makes the college football experience great is its uniqueness from venue to venue; where we're heading is an NFL-type of experience so bland it could be Anywhere, USA.

This doesn't even reach the constant barrage of sponsorships and advertising fired from every corner of the stadium. It's really an insult to the average fan. Basically, the universities and media companies think that our attention spans are so tiny that we need constant amusement, served up with a side of banking, car dealerships, and Coke. All of this brought to you with long delays for TV timeouts, so that the university can rake in that money, too. Considering the spiraling costs of tickets, it's not hard to figure why people are staying home.

"Upgrades" like concessions and Wi-Fi aren't the answer; they're the problem in a new and shiny form. These are just new ways to reach into the fans' wallets. Paying for premium Wi-Fi will be the new frontier once they upgrade what they've got. Concessions prices are already out of control.

If this sounds like a rant, well, I guess it is. Sort of. I realize that the universities need to make money, but we're rapidly reaching a point where the universities will not have a unique experience or product to offer. If that's true, why go there? Why go anywhere? And if the universities think they can build loyalty through a television, they're fooling themselves. If I can watch anyone in America on TV, what makes you special? The next generation, deprived of any reason to consider the local universities unique, will be free to follow any other school in America, 24 hours a day.

These universities are turning themselves into snowflakes--unique, just like everyone else.