Purdue Game Clusterf*#k

We all know how the outcome from the game, but I wanted to write a thread (and most likely an email to the AD's office) about the pisspoor excuse for event management that occurred yesterday.

We walked from the airport to the stadium starting at 1050am and by the time we got to Lane by 1130 we'd already heard some thunder to the South. We had gotten a text message at 0909 asking to pay attention "to social media (@HokieSports), the video board and PA system for information regarding weather and actions to be taken". I don't have twitter and refuse to join that website so I figured that I'd have to rely on the other two forms off communication they referenced, even though the university has a website, a mobile app, an emergency broadcast system, etc.

We got through the metal detectors (why the hell are there metal detectors now? What prompted that bit of security theater?) before being told @ 1140 that the gates and detectors were shut because of inclement weather. You can't see the video board from the SW entrance and the PA system might has well have been turned down to 0 because there are no outwards facing speakers to provide notifications. Someone in line asked the FD/Cops at the gate what was going on and was told that the gates would open at 1150. The gates opened at 1150 even though the weather hadn't changed and people entered with no one there to scan tickets. The flyover happened with few if any people in the stands (I can understand this because of fuel loads in the Hornets) and there was a 20min delay to the game. Even with said delay, advertisers had to get their time in so we instantly went to 3 minute ads.

Finally the rain starts and stops, starts and stops, and the ENTIRE TIME you could hear thunder to the South and see the clouds moving from South to North. Now, even though I have a plethora of weather apps on my phone, NONE of them could be used because the cell phone service in Lane Stadium at game time is ATROCIOUS. Finally there's some activity on the field as whoever in charge finally pulls their head out of their ass and makes a decision...to evacuate the stadium...in the middle of a thunderstorm...with 40k people. So everyone starts making their way out of the stands as it starts to pour and it takes a solid 20-30min for everyone to get into cover, although now everyone is in the concourse or have made their way into the other shelters.

And there we proceeded to sit for 1.5 hours waiting for information. The monitors in the concourse didn't provide any information, there was no PA system, cell phone service (at least for my wife and I) was inop because of all the people and aforementioned atrociousness, so there was generally no idea WTF was going on. Finally at about 230 word travels through the crowd that the AD is going to re-assess the situation at 3pm. Well, with no end in sight, another storm system looking like it was going to roll in about 5pm we decide to leave and go back to the airport to fly home. We exit the South side and see a bus pull up, but there's no marking of where it's going. We decide to go up to Cassell to see if we can catch the CRC and get there to see a bunch of people waiting for the buses as well, but no one there providing any info. We decide to walk back to the airport but as we start we see an "Out of Service" bus. We knock on the door and ask the driver if the buses are running. "Nope". Great. We get back to the airport, hop in the plane, fly back to Charlottesville, and about the time we land get a text message @ 4:44 about the game being postponed to 6:15.

So let's recap:

- Start a game even though there's severe inclement weather inbound.
- Fail to provide timely updates after calling a delay.
- Don't have a means of providing updates because the cell service is so atrocious
- Don't restart the buses to get people to where they need to go
- Failed to provide an update at the 3pm deadline

Honestly, how is VT this bad when it comes to situation management? You would have thought that they'd be king shit at getting information out quickly to large numbers of people and providing updates as events unfolded. Why do they continue to accept cell phone service that is sub-par in this day and age?

Moving forward, if there's inclement weather on the horizon, screw VT, I won't go to the game.