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ALAN GOLDENBACH The Bronx Bomber |
A year ago, if you saw any of the following, you knew that armageddon was approaching for Michigan sports fans.
This is not to say there will be an unusually large number of "ehs" and "aboots" at fraternity rush. Only the last part actually happened.
But that was enough to set a dangerous precedent for the athletic department.
As most are aware - some via first-hand experience - 3,200 naive yet ambitious freshman football fans, or even casual observers intent on experiencing the mystique of Michigan football games, will not get tickets to each home game. And yes, half of those students will either pay sums equivalent to out-of-state tuition for a ducat or be forced to sit home and watch Michigan try and dash Ohio State's national title hopes for a third straight year.
All kidding aside, this plan is nothing short of the most ridiculous maneuver yet pulled by an athletic department that has scammed, gypped, and cheated its most faithful of fans for far too long.
It is ludicrous enough that the University forces its own students to pay for tickets to see their peers, their classmates, compete.
It is such a shady business tactic to hear the athletic department justify charging students for tickets by giving the students a discount. Students have always thought that they were getting a good deal when the top of their ticket reads $13.50 while the guy sitting three sections over laid out 32 bucks for his.
We can't hope for the athletic department to ever grant students free tickets, because the precedent for charging students has been established for too long. What we can hope for is the department to re-assess its top priority.
It was given an opportunity to do so once a new wrinkle was added to the fold. The athletic department received too many requests for student tickets. Rather than expand the student section and decrease the number of tickets offered to non-students, the department issued a compromise far less appealing to the students - the split-season plan.
Senior Associate Athletic Director Keith Molin, an honorable person who is as a much a Michigan man as anyone else, said, "This is the most fair option there is. We couldn't take tickets away from those who already had them."
But he's wrong. It is not the most fair option and it could lead to a similar problem that now faces Crisler Arena. There is no doubt the most ardent, rambunctious, fanatical (which is what "fan" is an abbreviation for) spectators of Michigan sports are the students.
So what happened when the athletic department switched to split-season seating for basketball tickets keeping the student section the same size rather than expanding it? The transformation of Crisler from a riotous showplace to the "mausoleum," as it is now known to visiting fans. It is by far the quietest arena of any Division I program of Michigan's magnitude.
That is why Michigan hurt itself with this decision. Not because it is trying to wring every possible dollar out of the students and not because it plays favorites with affluent alumni and local supporters. It's because quieting the loudest section in the stadium will take away the home-field advantage that the Wolverines should not be privileged to have, but entitled to have.
You want the fairest solution to this problem, guarantee every student a seat. If they don't want to buy tickets, by say, March 1, then turn to others. Michigan has packed in over 100,000 for every game for more than 22 years. It won't be a problem. People will buy tickets.
But now, the athletic department is guaranteed of which people will buy tickets, the ones paying $32 apiece rather than $13.50. And those are the people the department wants sitting there. Crisler Arena is proof that screaming fans are not what the athletic department is concerned about. It would rather have those 1,600 seats filled with people paying the extra $18.50.
The department is implying your dollar is worth more than your vocal support. This is why there are split-season tickets - $18.50 worth of reasons.
Molin said that with the split-season plan, "no student is shut out of the experience." You're wrong, Keith. Sixteen-hundred students will be shut out of the Michigan-Ohio State experience this year, the greatest rivalry in college football.
-Alan Goldenbach can be reached over e-mail at agold@umich.edu