LINKS: Michigan in D1 Ticker Three Times This Morning (long initial post)
D1 Ticker is a listserv/daily e-mail that most athletics administrators are signed up for...I think anyone can sign up to it, but whatever...not the point.
Sometimes I share the relevant or interesting articles from the morning. Michigan is in it three times today. You've obviously read one of them, the other two are pretty interesting as well.
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September 30th, 2014 at 11:54 AM ^
I am so glad college hockey starts this weekend
September 30th, 2014 at 12:19 PM ^
CTRL+C, CTRL+V
September 30th, 2014 at 12:25 PM ^
I agree with the sentiment in the statement about needing independent medical professionals on the sideline to assess players. However, I laughed when I read the implication that Hoke was "too concerned with winning" to pull Shane out. Too concerned with pointlessly sticking by his guns about benching Gardner maybe, but by that point winning seemed a distant prospect, and Shane's stats to that point were hardly in "we'll lose for sure if we take him out" territory.
That being said, get some independent medical personnel on the sidelines. Take the decisions out of the hands of people who have agendas or are simply incompetent boobs.
September 30th, 2014 at 12:33 PM ^
I can only speak for myself, but the ticket prices are the sole reason I didn't purchase season tickets this year. I'm currently a Junior, and have had season tickets the past two years. Last year, I purchased a set for my girlfriend (not a UM student), so we had to pay the validation fee for each game on her tickets, so an extra $35-55 depending on the game.
This year, despite being eligible for the Superfan seating, we decided we could not afford to pay the season ticket price on top of the validation fees. Instead, we have purchased invididual game tickets for far less than what we would have payed with the season tickets. Making use of stubhub, friends, etc, we have attended Utah and Minnesota, and have tickets for PSU, and are still well under budget. We will probably take advantage of the low prices for Indiana and Maryland as well, and still be well under budget.
I will say that the performance is partially why we have been able to do this. Without the 2-3 losses, the games still wouldn't be affordable to us. Even if the prices were at their "normal" level, we would still be okay staying home and watching from the couch (like for Miami (NTM) and App State). The same amount of my Saturday would be taken up, but it would be spent nervous in front of the TV or making lunch instead of walking to the stadium.
I should add that I was one of the people who were thinking we would have a 10-11 win season this year (crazy, I know), so winning and losing literally has nothing to do with not renewing my season tickets. You could argue that if the home schedule were better, we would still have renewed them, and that is a fair point, but that still has nothing to do with winning or losing.
tl;dr: College football, at least for passionate fans and especially students, is not the same thing as a business.
September 30th, 2014 at 12:41 PM ^
should have just borrowed a friends mcard who wasnt going. thats what most people do
September 30th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^
They caught my brother and me doing that my freshman year, and I was written up for Mcard fraud. I don't know how that happened, and I'm sure it would have been fine to do in a normal situation, but I didn't want to risk it again.
September 30th, 2014 at 12:44 PM ^
So losing has it's benefits? ugh
September 30th, 2014 at 1:06 PM ^
Regarding the ticket price article, this guy purports to be an economist, discredits Bacon's grasp of economics then states "The problem is not enough people want to watch Michigan football. At any price." That is one of the most economically ignorant statements I have ever read. It is ludicrous to make the argument the stadium would not be at max capacity if tickets were free. In fact, Bacon explicity says the problem is that Michigan is charging prices that are too high relative to the utility the consumers of the tickets are estimating they will receive from their purchase. Furthermore, Scwarz asserting that the consumer's distaste for the commercializtion of the experience can't affect their perception of utility and hence lower the price they are willing to pay is also quite wrong. He hinted at the one appropriate argument that could be made, but never developed it. A fixation on total attendance may not be the best way identify success. It may be more profitable for the department to sell 99,000 seats at price x than 100,000 seats at price y, but he leaves that argument blowing in the wind.
September 30th, 2014 at 3:07 PM ^
Am I naive or ignorant to say that attendance during the Rich Rod era pretty much negates Schwarz' argument?
September 30th, 2014 at 7:20 PM ^
I think that is probably a pretty fair assessment, though I wouldn't have thought of it like that. For sure, wins and losses have a lot to do with willingness to pay, but it is not the only thing. One of the things that has already been stated by Brian, et al is that RR's games were fun. The more porous the defense got, the more prolific Denard's offense got. We complained, but we still enjoyed watching*. I have never owned season tickets after my student days in the mid 1990s, so I don't know how much ticket prices have gone in the last 5-10 years, but everyone here says the increase has been pretty hefty. The 2009 team performed worse than the 2013 team. They had no issues selling tickets in 2010 yet they did in 2014. Schwarz argument is pretty simple, shitty performance=inferior ticket sales regardless of price, and your argument is a simple but effective counter.
*For what its worth, I had a company commander who use to say "Enjoy it while it sucks, because it will always get worse." That advice rings true more than I would like it to, but is especially fitting now.