Student Section going GA
http://www.mgoblue.com/tickets/students-fbl.html
I am sure this makes many of you happy but as a kid whose tickets were going to have excellent senior standing next year and who always makes it before kickoff, I am really angry.
GA is just chaos
(Edit: As a poster pointed out below, tickets are also way more expensive)
(Second Edit: To those thinking you will get good seats just for showing up before kick, you are wrong. Now that there is a reason to go early, we will have our own mini-Paternoville. For good games, you will have to be there 2 hours early. I love Michigan football, but as a grad student who also remembers pregames as the best part of being an undergrad, I really think this could kill some of the Saturday fun.)
April 23rd, 2013 at 11:24 AM ^
the majority of whom are spending their waking hours partying on their parents' dime while driving the Escalade their daddy bought them will still be able to buy tickets... whereas the "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps working their way through college" cohort will be left to pay for the jacked up tab by themselves
April 23rd, 2013 at 10:36 AM ^
The student section has been de facto GA going back as far as I can remember. Making it de jure GA doesn't seem to be all that big a deal.
April 23rd, 2013 at 10:51 AM ^
April 23rd, 2013 at 11:18 AM ^
What happens to them?
Honestly, we're going to see the upper portions of each section empty, with the few last row fanatics sitting up in Row 92 (or whatever it is), and a whole lotta space in between.
The problem I see is that a certain percentage of students miss a game. If it's 15% or 20%, how does the AD determine that student can't buy tickets the following year?
As stated, this may fill the first few rows (10-15) by kick-off, with mostly full up to the portals at the same time, but virtually empty above them.
To my mind, football Saturdays are a significant part of the college student experience, and every student should/will get the opportunity to buy tickets. Maybe the raised prices will cull the fence sitter from ordering tickets. Who knows...
Finally, it'll be interesting to see what comes into the email from the AD in late July, when they finally know how many non-renewals took place. I'm expecting there will be season ticket packages avaialable at that time.
April 23rd, 2013 at 11:28 AM ^
1. people who are completely unaffected by it (i.e. most of the people on this blog)
2. students who didn't try to get in line early for the Ohio bball game this year
April 23rd, 2013 at 12:14 PM ^
But see I think you're wrong when you say that alumns are "unaffected by it". Seeing the student section half full is goddamn embarrasing and it bothers the hell out of me to shell out big bucks for my annual "donation" so I can then shell out bigh bucks for tickets, drive three hours one way from Cleveland and back again only to realize that the people who only have to drag their ass in from West Quad and practically get the seats for free cant seem to make it on time. And if bothers me more that those same students, because they ARE young and loud and enthusiastic dont realize what a tremendous positve influence they can have on the team and when they blow games off. It still gives me chills when I think about Kovacs last year during the coin flip at the Northwestern game when he pointed down at the student section and said "we want to play down there".
Everyone in the fucking building knew why. Damn it....show up and help them!
April 23rd, 2013 at 12:51 PM ^
Aaaaaand /thread
Good job mGrowOld.
Let's see, we have on the one hand, a mild psychological discomfort experienced by alums who have to look at a partly empty student section for the first half of the 1st quarter of the Purdue/Illinois games (note: the student section was packed well before kickoff for UTL, Ohio 2011, and MSU 2012). Oh dear, the horror!
In order to spare yourself the unspeakable tragedy of having to look such an abomination, you believe it's righteous and just to say "sucks to be you!" to all the rising seniors who showed up on time to every game over the past three years (and had lousy endzone seats for the first two) and force them to have to arrive to the stadium at the crack of down and wait 6+ hours to be able to get sideline seats, not to mention having to deal with assholes and line cutters.
Perhaps since you feel so strongly about the siutation you'd be willing to forego your tailgating traditions and join in line at 5:00am. We can stand and chat about how awful that 1/4 empty student section looked for the next six hours.
Yes, I realize alumns have to dish out cash to get tickets whereas students get them at a discount (actually our discount is much less than the one you got - we now pay over $42 per game). But this is how it has worked for decades. You got to take advantage of it during your four years here, and now you're saying that today's crop of students, even the ones who show up an hour early to every game, shouldn't be allowed to have the Michigan gameday experience without waiting in line for 6 hours?
For those of you scoffing at the possiblity that students will have to arrive 6+ hours early to get those row 30, section 26 seats for the big games... how can you possibly argue that that's not going to happen? Like I have mentioned dozens of times, at the Ohio bball game this year I arrived at Crisler at 4:20pm (for a 9:00pm game) in 30 degree weather (snowing), and yet there were still 1500-2000 people who were already there. I'd say it's a pretty good estimate to say that there are 5x as many student football ticket holders (probably more actually) than bball season ticket holders, so it's just math. There WILL be over 10,000 people in line for the Ohio game at 8:00am.
Please put yourself in my situation and ask yourself how you'd feel if suddenly your senior year you were put in this situation.
That's just not true....
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/dave-brandon-says-students-actually-arent-showing
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/student-section-needs-be-reduced
Apparently it's a problem at big, non-early games too.
For the 3:30 p.m. kickoff against Michigan State on Oct. 20, there were 3,500 no-shows, Brandon said. And, another 1,000 students came in and validated their tickets to re-sell, bringing the total to 4,500 no-shows.r
And it showed.
Without even getting into basketball, which had a lot of the same problems. There might have been a line for Ohio State, but for games like Arkansas there were multiple student sections empty at the top.
The question is- would you even have a problem with this if you WEREN'T a senior?
How can you use attendance numbers from last year's football season to tell us what it going to happen in an entirely different season and under an entirely different ticket system? The point he was trying to make was that a TON of people are going to have to spend a TON of their time waiting, when they would have shown up on time.
And just an fyi. The Arkansas bball game was not filled, but there were still a bunch of students that were there hours early. These are your loyal fans that are spending that time waiting and NOT the people who don't show up. So who gets hurt? I think you can make a strong case the people that suffer the most are those that wait all that time
considering the average was purported to be somewhere around 5000. If that's the case then it seems the problem is mostly due to some cohort of ~3500 students who just don't show up to any games at all. i'd say there's a pretty simple solution to that. don't let them get tickets the next year.
as for the bball games...here is a picture i took about 10 minutes into the first half of the NC State (!!!) game
Premium courtside seats for the top non-con game of the year and half the seats in that middle section are empty. So it's very difficult to argue it's a student problem as far as basketball goes.
And yes, I'd still have a problem if I weren't a senior, because I just don't think waiting in line for 6 years should be part of the gameday experience. to make it worse, the same people who caused the problems are going to be the ones who benefit from this. the greeks will designate some people to wait in line, and then 15 minutes before the game, some frat guys and a couple of sorority chicks will slip in with them up at the front. people will protest a bit, but the frat guys will say something to the effect that they were really there but left to go to the bathroon, and the sorority chicks will smile and flirt and say that yeah, they were seriously just going to the bathroom. what do you do in that situation? get in a fistfight? yell and scream at hte top of your lungs? call the police? i'm really wondering what you think can be done to prevent this
Half the greek community (2500 people?) will show up 8 hours early. The other half will gradually slip in with them at the front of the line throughout the two hours before the gates open.
with the #8 team in the country can't be expected to show up, why would you expect the students to fill up the crappy upper deck seats?
And in any case, just as many non-students seats are empty in the upper deck as student seats.
Yes i have a problem with it, even i graduated 2 years ago and was never late from 2007-2011 (yea 5th year), went to away games etc, so this change doesn't affect me
I believe having the whole student section GA is better than assigned seats. But I also think there are other tweaks and improvements, such as Brian's suggestion with MCard swipes, that could avoid the various problems suggested by multiple posters in the related threads.
We are the leaders and best and should not settle for a simple solution like implementing a full GA like MSU, while just accepting the shortcomings of that system like our little brother does.
While seniority may lead to "entitlement", I feel that there is actually some entitlement that could be deserved, say if a student is a member of other athletic teams/ have excellent record in MCard attendance of football games etc. Whatever that combination of achievement/record might be, i leave that for the AD. But simply viewing this as a seniority/entitlement issue, instead of a chance to reward students' contribution to the school, could lead to what Brian suggest - losing future fan interest.
Even a simple thing like priority by sections/blocks, GA by rows could be better than simply going full GA.
Simply set a cutoff time like 20 minutes (or whenever band takes field) before kickoff, then let others take the unfilled good sections. Eliminates the line problem while making sure people arrive on time.
It's been said before, but again, blame your fellow students. A student section that isn't packed at Michigan is ridiculous. A half empty student section is a god damn disgrace. Period. Dave Brandon is not going to let that just work it self out. Something needed to be done and he took action. We appreciate your efforts, but we do not appreciate looking at empty metal bleachers.
just so your self-righteous notions about what the stadium should look like can be vindicated
April 24th, 2013 at 12:48 AM ^
If someone told me the only way I could watch a game in the big house was to wait in line for 8 hours, I would do it.
thought i had cought every thread over the past two days, just posted this in a new thread.
THANK WHICHEVER MOD SAVED ME WITH A 30 SECOND DELETED THREAD.
