Myths, legends about Cheney are revealed

Somewhere between urban legend and rustic myth is the notion that nothing ever happens in Cheney.

Not so. There is the rodeo. And scraping off the bottoms of your shoes after the rodeo.

One year on George Washington’s birthday, the city’s retailers gave away 2,400 cherry pies.

And in 1881, some civic minded chaps rode into Spokane, kidnapped the auditor and made off with all the records, thus laying claim to the county seat. Spokane eventually got the auditor, the records and the official distinction back, but occasionally considers ceding it all away again, if only Cheney agrees to take our city government, too.

“Big doin’s” would be Cheney’s middle name, if it had a first one.

Perhaps that’s why Scott Barnes is careful to call Saturday’s football game between Eastern Washington and Montana “the largest event in the history of Cheney,” to distinguish it from the proverbial big.

Of course, when the five-pound bag that is Woodward Field somehow makes room for 11,000 customers, it’s an event that qualifies as both large and big.

Not surprisingly, there are those who fear it won’t be large enough – a group split between the archetype Spokane sports fan who normally wouldn’t decide until after lunch whether to take in the 2 p.m. festivities, and the manifest-destiny Montanan who has come to think of this place as West Missoula.

Both schools of thought that Barnes, as EWU’s athletic director, is trying to debunk.

“We’re hoping,” he said, “to start to change the culture of our fan base.”

This, in a nutshell, is why the game won’t be played at Albi Stadium again, even though the last two meetings there drew 17,142 and 15,678 – attendance figures previously plausible for EWU sports only if legs (or toes) were counted instead of heads.

Instead, Eastern has bumped Woodward’s permanent capacity to almost 8,000 and has trucked in another 3,000 temporary bleachers to bring Saturday’s target number to 11,106.

Loss of potential revenue: Not as much as you might think.

Potential enhancement of home-field advantage: Priceless.

The appearance of the snazzy new donor suites and media center – these things can’t be called press boxes anymore – on Woodward’s west berm is the latest and most prominent sign that Eastern, heading into its third decade as an NCAA Division I-AA member, has finally settled on just where football belongs: on campus. And unlike Gonzaga’s new basketball arena, which was driven mostly by fan demand and the realization of how much revenue the school was missing out on, EWU’s football facility improvements have been triggered by, well, a small sense of embarrassment.

“It’s pretty simple,” Barnes said. “When you drove into our campus area, over that hill, what you previously saw wasn’t a Division I venue by any measure. For us, the goal was to come up to the level – and hopefully beyond – of other Big Sky schools. We started that process with locker rooms and coaches offices three years ago, and continued it with the front entrance to the stadium. Then the lead gift came in (for the press box) and off we go.

“There are a couple of things at work. One piece – and it’s always there – is recruiting. We needed to enhance our ability to attract a higher caliber of student-athlete, and facilities help you do that. But the other is just a sense of pride in the institution and the program, a catalyst to bring alumni back to the campus.”

Barnes told the story of an old guard EWU donor “who’s rolled up her sleeves to help us for 20 years.” On a sneak-preview tour of the new structure, she teared up.

So much for the sentimental stuff. Now for the roars, cheers and catcalls.

It’s not as if the Albi games were a bad deal – not with the atmosphere and excitement they generated. But it is true that at least half and probably more of that atmosphere was created by Montana fans more than happy to blast over on interstate and find lots of wide open spaces, especially with their own joint sold out constantly.

Hence the consternation when Barnes was quoted last summer to the effect that, “Wouldn’t it be great to see 10,500 Eagles in the stands and 500 Grizzlies?”

“I was pretty unpopular in Missoula,” he admitted, “but ultimately, that’s where I’d like to be.”

The Big Sky standard allotment for visiting teams is indeed 500 tickets. Eastern made 2,500 available to the UM ticket office, and untold scads of Grizzly fans have purchased through EWU. The latest urban legend was that they were snapping up EWU’s three-game mini-packages, so scarce were tickets.

Except that, as of Tuesday afternoon, about 1,400 of the $20 reserved seats still remained unsold, though the phones jangled steadily.

“The next time we play (UM) in Cheney, there will be less (visitor) tickets allotted,” Barnes said. “How many, I don’t know. And what we hope is that changes our fans’ approach. What we don’t have is the culture of having to come to an event early, be a part of all of it, buying tickets in advance, building that anticipation. That’s the kind of thing that helps build a home-field advantage and we hope our alums get that message.”

Is it worth giving up 6,000 tickets to get that message across?

“Well, to get to that number (the 17,142 who came in 2002), there were a lot of discounts and many more comps,” Barnes said. “The other piece for us is that now we get to keep our concessions and parking revenue, there’s no rent, we keep our title sponsor revenue from the Ridpath, and indirectly the suite revenue we derive is part of it. Obviously, the Montana game isn’t the only reason we sold out our suites, but it’s a part of it.

“When that gets figured in, we’re much better off.”

But the Eagles are better off anyway. The casual Spokane fan will be turned off by the relative inconvenience of battling for parking and committing to a ticket in advance, but foundations aren’t built on casual fans.

“Our institutional mission is to be a residential campus,” Barnes said. “These are the memories that are created on campus. I know our students love the fact we’re playing this game here – as do our student-athletes.”

And Cheney, too. Something’s happening there, and it ain’t the rodeo.