Obviously, the elephant in the room is going to be the on-field performance, and that's something that DeLeon is probably unable to touch with a 10-foot pole.
That said, I did attend my first game at MT in a long time, and I think we have a lot going for us gameday wise. I really enjoyed everything (concessions, campus, band, stadium, etc) outside of what happened on the field. Props to those folks who have worked their tails off over the last decade to bring MT's gameday into a more modern feel.
One thing that I think did need some attention was the tiny little Lightning's Locker Room and the merchandising. First off, I don't think you could fit more than 5 or 6 people in there, and even if you could, there wasn't all that much to buy anyway. Looking online and at Fanatics there's a rather large selection, but being a spur of the moment trip from Knoxville, I didn't have time to order anything. I figured we'd get something in the Boro. We stopped at Textbook Brokers (didn't this used to be BRBS?), they had some ok stuff. The bookstore was closed for some reason on a game day. All of the really nice Nike or Champion stuff was nowhere to be seen. Would have been a great night to have a big sweatshirt/hoodie selection.....And i've been looking for the coach's hat that Stock wears for years now. And the wife really wanted one of those Stranger Things font-ed T-shirts (those were awesome BTW). We found a couple of 3XLs at BRBS, nothing anywhere else. If that's the official blackout T, then you guys need to have a ton of them available. If physical space is an issue, it can't cost much to set up a merchandising tent with that stuff available.
I get it, chicken or the egg - the stuff doesn't sell, so why stock it? But if you don't stock it, I can't buy it, and it won't sell.
Anyways, that's a little feedback from 2 alums ('05 & '07) who attended their first game since 2016.