It’s no secret that Brown athletic events have abysmal student attendance. After a basketball game at the Pizzitola Sports Center last spring, The Daily Pennsylvanian took note of “Brown’s home crowd, or lack thereof.” Brown’s poor athletic attendance has officially become cemented as part of the University’s reputation. But the stands weren’t always so desolate at home games.
Between 2022 and 2025, there were campaigns of school spirit clubs. While the Bear Pack brought enthusiasm to Brown sports for a short time, their Instagram has been dormant since last Spring. It was one thing these programs shared that caused their short-lived runs: they were led by athletes. What Brown athletics needs is a program pioneered by non-athletes.
Right now, Brown students aren’t going to games. According to The Herald’s Spring 2025 Poll, when asked “How often do you attend Brown Athletics matches, as a supporter?” 80.6% of students responded less than “once a month,”, with about one in four students responding “never.” This season, Brown Football sported an average attendance of around 4,300 fans per game. But this is a misleading statistic, thanks to a 16,000-fan game at Harvard. For the four games at Brown Stadium, the average attendance was closer to 3,000. These numbers pale in comparison to game attendance at other Ivy League schools.
The previous versions of the Bruno Bear Pack were a good start toward changing the culture. According to their defunct Instagram page, the Bear Pack offered a few things that should come back. They posted a weekly overview of home games, shared senior spotlights for various teams, announced themes to promote fan attendance and held promotional giveaways of exclusive merch and high-value items like an iPad and a TV. There are also photos of Bear Pack members sporting bright red wigs, shirts and waving rally towels at games. The Bear Pack effectively raised awareness of upcoming games and inspired turnout and participation from the Brown community. We need all this and more if we want to improve our school’s athletic culture.
As Margaret Woodberry ’24.5, a student-athlete and one of the leaders of both efforts, told The Herald in 2024, “There is room to create new traditions that will last a lot longer than any one person’s time at Brown … The chance to leave a lasting impression on this school and athletics is something that really resonates with me.” But the Brown student-athlete community let the Bear Pack die before any such traditions could be formed.
A non-athlete-led program would be able to offer the lasting effect that both previous attempts at changing the culture around Brown athletics could not. The point of this kind of program isn’t for its members to be the only ones at the games, but rather to spark new interest and buy-in from the student body.
Having the Bear Pack led by athletes is counterproductive to its mission. It should come as no surprise that our student-athletes are very busy. Not only are they full-time students like the rest of us, but they are also competing in a Division 1 sport, which can amount to just as many, if not more hours per week than academics. What’s more, athletes are already the group that is most likely to show up to games. If it’s already mostly athletes packing the stands and athletes run the Bear Pack, the whole idea of supporting Brown athletics starts to feel insular to the athlete community and inaccessible for non-athletes.
Non-athlete leaders — colloquially known as NARPs for “non-athletic regular people” — could provide the Bear Pack with a network of non-athlete supporters, which make up the overwhelming majority of students at Brown. Providing the club with a more open network to the students who aren’t already going to the games would be effective because it would expose a larger population of students to the newly increased, infectious spirit.
The next step for transforming Brown athletics is getting more fans onboard. Bringing non-athletes into the leadership of athletics hype is the way to do it. The fastball is coming straight down the middle. All Brown athletics needs is a few star-caliber NARPs to hit it out of the park.
Clay Edelson ’29 can be reached at clayton_edelson@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Clay Edelson is an Opinions Columnist. He is from St. Louis, Missouri and plans on concentrating in Political Science. In his free time, Clay loves playing with his band, attending Brown Athletics events, and hiking.
