Student Section needs to be reduced

It's been like this for 3:30 games as well.

Wait list? There is no wait list for student tickets. And that would leave a backlog of people emailing the office trying to give excuses.

For noon games I'd often come in around 2 minutes before/after kickoff, because of a) lines b) I sleep late and fuck waking up oh shit there's a game today let me throw on shoes and not-enough-clothes-shit-it's-cold-let-me-go-back-and-get-a-coat and c) SHIT MORE LINES

But I think exactly at gametime would be a reasonable cutoff. However, what I've noticed lately (idk if this has happened for a while), is that people push to the front no matter what seats they're actually in.

When I was a wee freshman, we would push up if rows in front of us were empty, sure. But not until maybe the second quarter. We weren't idiots and realized those people weren't there yet, not that they just wouldn't show up. But I went to the MSU game and it seemed like everyone around me was packed two-to-a-seat while the top was sparse. Freshmen need to wait their turn and stay up instead of pushing down. That might explain the empty seats up top. Just a theory.

Make the student section first-come, first-serve. 

Story time:

I went to the USC-Oregon game last weekend. Had a GREAT time tailgating in 80 degree weather, booze a-flowin, every bit as wild as our tailgates at UM were before the crackdown on State Street houses, if not more so. 

BUT

There was a mass exodus from the awesome campus tailgates by the students about 30-45 minutes before kickoff. We needed to head to the Coliseum early so my friend's sister and her friends could get seats in the student section, which is first-come, first-serve. I didn't see anyone camping out a la Paternoville, but either they have some restriction on entry time or no one wants to try that in South Central LA. They also use color-coded wristbands to keep some semblance of order, but I was too many sheets to the wind to fully understand the system. Their student section filled quickly and efficiently long before the non-student seats did. 

Conclusion: If you can drag the hard-partying SC student body from their gloriously warm and sunny pregames to that hideous coliseum, where the ones that know anything about football were fully expecting to be demolished by Oregon, we have room for improvement.  

You realize that probably 90-95% of the kids supposed to be sitting in those empty seats are at the game, right? They're just not sitting where they are supposed to be sitting.

I would hazard to guess that half of the first 25 rows are filled with students who ought to be sitting about 70 rows higher up. If you've ever sat in the lower part of the student section, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why everyone is cramped together worse than rush hour traffic on the 405.

But those kids that "plan on showing up late the following year"?  How do you determine who it is that is making such plans for the 2013 Football Season?  Hacking into their planners on their computers/iPhones/tablets/other assorted e-devices?  Or just peeking over their shoulders when they are writing things on next year's calendar?  Sounds too 'big-brotherish' to me.

Besides, college kids that plan that far ahead?  Reward them!  Most that age subscribe to the mindset "Live for Today!"

Why would you drive 10 hours for that?

but driving 10 hours to tell her that, really?

Here's the problem:

1.  Students are too busy drinking before the game.  The last of them walk in with 8:00 minutes left in the second quarter.

2.  They don't sit in their assigned seats.  The majority of them pile down toward the field, which makes life awful for the students with good seats. 

but we'll all make sure to stay off YOUR lawn!

I was there and it never actually filled up. It got most of the way there but there was still a healthy amount of empty seats up there

My dear sir and it was nowhere full at the end of the 1st qtr.

That doesn't explain it.  Students have always tried to move down from their official seats.  In years past, though, it was a lot harder to move down because there weren't 5,000 no-shows at every game.  I don't know why, but there seem to be a lot more students that just plain don't show up on a regular basis.

I just graduated a few years ago and I swear this did not go on.