Some athletic bands have the luxury of being loved and appreciated by their communities. Unfortunately, most athletic bands are little more than an after thought or background noise to the sporting events they perform at (a lot like cheerleaders if you will). This apathy and lack of attention often turns into neglect and a lack of appreciation.

As some of you may know from reading the "About" page, I was a member of the University of Florida Marching Band for several years. For most of my tenure we practiced on Pony Field during the week and on the practice field (the same one used by the football team during the week) on Saturday morning. Then, changes started to happen. We were moved off of Pony Field onto Norman Field. Norman field was already used by several club sports teams and students who liked to play Ultimate Frisbee. No one thought much about it until we realized that adding daily marching band practices would be the straw that broke the fields back. After a couple of months the field degenerated into a dust and dirt covered mess filled with potholes and pitfalls (some big enough to put a small person in). We suffered through it with the understanding that the UAA (University Athletic Association) would deal with the field conditions in the upcoming year. After all, this was 2006, the year the mighty Gators would win the BCS and reap all of the financial benefits that come with it.

The next year came (I had graduated by this point) and the band did get new uniforms, but the field was even worse. Several students complained of the dust and dirt in the air on the field and reported coughing up "Darkly colored black and/or brown mucus" after being on the field for prolonged periods. On top of that, the band no longer practiced on the football team's field on Saturday mornings. It may not sound like a big deal, but that was the band's best opportunity to set it's formations correctly since it has professionally marked lines. Instead, they stayed on Norman with the lines that students had to try to mark off themselves on the rough turrain.

This year (after winning another BCS championship) the University tried to work with the field a little more by pressing down the dirt with heavy machinery and buying new sod. In an almost comical twist, the university had enough money to purchase the sod but not the labor to install it. So, the students had to install the sod themselves. Unfortunately, this happened in the same week that the University announced they were making the head football coach the highest paid coach in the conference.

Now with all of this said I should clarify some things:

1. Most of the students doing this work are members of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, service organizations that are dedicated to serving bands. These students are usually looking for large service projects like this to take on.
   
2. I don't think UF is doing anything wrong by giving a coach who won 2 national championships in the past 3 years a raise.
   
3. The economy is bad
   
4. The band program at UF does get a lot of things (new uniforms and a new building for one), the issue is that they do have a lot of other legitimate needs.
   
5. I think the band should get more but I don't think it should come at the expense of other programs. What's more the old debate of who's more important, the team or the band/cheerleaders/etc is just pointless. The idea isn't to make one flourish at the expense of the others but to try to do what's right by all of the programs.
   

So what's left? If there's a finite amount of money how does one program get more without hurting other programs? The answer is simple, alumni donations. Alumni are one of the financial lifelines of a University and they can feed whatever organizations they deem necessary. I think that's the only real way that these programs will get the things they need. In some cases outside sources will make donations, recently George Steinbrenner donated a large amount of money to the school of music which allowed them to build a new building. But a lot of outside sources will only start to make donations if they see a good product or if they are somehow solicited with a good pitch. The catch is that building that good product takes money and other resources, so what comes first the chicken or the egg? What I believe should happen is that alumni, who have been through the program and know about these needs, should be the first to try to donate to their program in order to build that good product that other outside sources will want to support.