We Out: A student view of the new ticket policies

1. The basketball situation was very poorly handled. I completely understand your plight and think Brandon really fucked this one up.

2. The skywriting is absolutely embarrassing and Brandon should do something like match MSU's fundraising efforts to try to save some face.

3. From a football standpoint you will not receive any sympathy from me or seemingly the majority of the alums. I missed one fucking game at Michigan while I was an undergrad and it was for a wedding against my will. I had to deal with multiple 4 loss seasons before being treated to our '97 championship. We actually made the decision to not tailgate for noon games because we looked so forward to each game. The decision to tailgate and lazily stroll into the games in the 2nd Q is justifiably being penalized IMO.

Our OOC schedules have certainly sucked and don't think that season ticket alums such as myself don't hate that shit too. But you reap what you sew and I doubt this is going to change anytime soon.

4. Go blue.

I'm with the students for the sheer fact that this policy was announced after tickets were purchased. Don't oversell the section by 50% if you're not going to tell ticket buyers from the start that's exactly what they're getting into. The whole "we'll give refunds if people don't like it" line only goes so far. This was a poorly implemented policy from an Athletic Department already treading on thin ice with the students' good will. Of course there's going to be pushback.

Why do so many care about what time students, or anybody, show up? If they paid, they can do what they want.

Can anyone please bitch with me about the NEED to raise student ticket prices and implement a fee in order to remove asbestos from the CCRB, but DAVE BRANDON NEEDED TO BUILD A 2.8 MILLION DOLLAR MARQUEE?!

I went to basically every game the last four years, and I thought the atmosphere last  year was really really good for a lot of home games. There were empty seats at some games, but probably because there were too many students seats sold to begin with. The problem I have is that you promise 4500 seats and then change your mind at the last second. It comes off as manipulative and just increases DB's already precarious reputation. 

...but does the blogger like anything about Michigan athletics aside from tailgating?



Seriously, though, do students like that ever think about how it must feel to be a player putting it all on the line each week only to see that thousands of students can't bother to put down a beer and get to the stadium on time? Yes, the AD policies may suck but if you are a true fan, aren't you there to support the players? The team? Dave Brandon isn't on the field. Gardner is. Lewan is. Jake Ryan will be. Fitz is back after an awful injury, too. These guys give up a lot-can't we show them our appreciation?

Is it crazy to suggest that in order to get students in the seats, the AD should raise ticket prices and then reimburse X amount if dollars if a student ticket is scanned?



Let's say the student pays $500 for the football package instead of $200 or whatever it is today. If the student goes to the game and gets their ticket scanned, the difference between regular ticket price and student ticket price is credited to their account.



Obviously I realize not every student can pony up $500 at the beginning of every football season. I'm just trying to come up with a way to get people in the seats, make the AD however many millions they need, and to make the students semi happy.

I wonder how these policies will be embraced by the next freshmen class. They won't have anything to compare them with and I would guess much more likely to accept them than current students who are being asked to adjust midstream. I'd like to think DB had a worthy long term objective than it appears but the way this was handled makes me believe otherwise.

Still don't tell me college sports are leaving students behind when your best memories are outside the stadium.

Let's say there is a restaurant called Allez Bleu, that had 20 dishes in the menu. While the restaurant is excellent and all food is good, not all dishes are great. For a few items in the menu, the average person would be willing to pay only $5 but the same person would be willing to pay $100 for two of them. The owner decides you have to pay $200 for all 20 dishes. So for the average person decides that he can skip a few meals he paid for - he was willing to shell $200 for the two things he really wanted to eat and the other dishes are a nice bonus that he may skip if he has to collect a couple of data points in the lab.

Well, the owner of the restaurant gets very angry at this behavior and decides that now, not only you have to pay for all the 20 menu items, you'll also have to eat most of the 18 dishes if you want to ever smell the two items that you were more excited about. The average costumer than gets outraged by this owner and says he doesn't want to eat there anymore.

Of course, there are always the people that LOVE LOVE LOVE the restaurant and thinks that you should love it as much as him and feel like you should eat every single item in the menu, including Akron and Delaware State, and are outraged by your outrage that you are being forced to eat subpar food just to get to the main course.

Of course, tickets are not food items - arenas don't change size so you have the same number of available tickets for each game and you kinda have to force the sales of season tickets or else Akron will have a lot of unsold seats. My point is that the people that don't go to every single game are not terrible people that should be stoned to death.

The AD policy of overselling tickets to fill Crisler is a fine policy from the risk management point of view. You get more money and it won't affect too much. Hey, that's standard practice among airlines. But there is a reason why airlines have such poor costumer ratings.

It honestly hadn't occurred to me until I read this thread how many people on this blog do not love Michigan football. I have always loved M football since I was little. It is by far my most favorite sports team / sporting event that there is.



I do everything possible to be in my seat for the band to take the field and I have never missed a kickoff. I want to savor every moment that I get to enjoy M football regardless of who is playing/coaching/directing athletics. I am now realizing how many of you just don't feel the same way. It's going to be tough for those of you that love it like I do to understand the rest of you who don't. I hope the AD can figure it out.

In the old days underclassmen would receive split season tickets if student tickets were oversold. The new policy avoids split tickets while allowing all students to attend most games that they want to.



Yeah, it's a bummer that they had to implement this policy, but it sounds better than the alternatives. On the positive side, it sounds like it's weeding out some of the whiners and complainers.

My big problem with the athletic department is that it is operated as a ruthless profit maximizer. This is a university and game day should be a fun and affordable experience for all - especially for students. Pretty soon you will see ads, corporate seating that goes unfilled against bad teams (especially in bad weather) and an incredibly stale environment (we are pretty far down this road). I am an alum and die hard fan, but I'm also not a fool with my money. It is hard to justify season tickets with a seat license, hotel, etc. I try for one football weekend now and a bball game and catch everything else from the comfort of my sofa or a Michigan bar. More and more people will make that decision but the athletic department will just sell additional corporate seats - it'll be Yankee stadium. Why are they tax exempt again? Or any professional sports team for that matter? And why should I donate money when the school doesn't need it and I have debt?

The point about the level of OOC competition is well-taken. Here is the complete list of teams Michigan played when I was an undergrad in Ann Arbor (some teams were played more than once during this period of time):

Duke, Cal, Navy, Vanderbilt, Washington, Missouri, Arizona, Texas A&M, Virginia and UCLA.

Every single team was a D-I, major conference foe except Navy, an independent.  Today, of course, it's different, and despite my love for Michigan football, it'd be hard to get to the game early to see Michigan play some of the current teams on the schedule.

It's my belief that students who plunk down their money for tickets have no sworn obligation to attend the games. Brandon has their money, and while it's nice that he wants the students to attend and support the team, that's all he's entitled to. He is not entitled to make the game, which is ostensibly put on for the student body, a hassle for the students he is there to serve.

Yes, the athletic department is part of the university, and the university exists at least in part for the students who attend it.

As for the skywriting idiocy, one really has to wonder what this man is wasting money on, if things are as tight as he claims. If I were a regent I'd demand some accountability and make whatever bonehead in the athletic department thought that stunt up to pay it out of his or her pocket.

Then again, if I was a regent, I'd be pressing the administration to get into Brandon's shit anyway, since he is the most self-aggrandizing, annoying AD in the history of the school, and as far as I'm concerned, is ruining my game day experience in many, many ways. 

This thread is a goddamn train wreck.

Until we can explain that, we're going to be able to explain anything else. Obviously there is something less appealing about the college football scene to the current generation of students. The current consensus for the AD and mgoblog seems to be that most current students are just sucky people...

For the past several decades we have watched the inexorable piecemeal removal of "college" from college football, and then we wonder why "college" isn't interested in it anymore

The athletic department made 11 million in 2011 and 15 million in 2012. This profit was earned while spending like a drunk sailor on facility upgrades. According to Brandon the department returns 2 million to the general fund (probably before the profits listed above) and finances are tight.



Ideally the bulk of this profit should go back to the university scholarship fund since the primary purpose of the university is supposedly to provide education and not promote sports teams. Athletics should enhance the educational mission of the school not just be a profitable side business. Since this crazy idea will never happen it would be nice If the department would at least stop trying to maximize profit from students and lecturing them on how to be a proper fan.

The university, including the athletic department, existing to serve the students specifically and the community in general. It's a public non-profit university and should not be run like a private company.

As an alumnus, and one who loves Michigan athletics, and as someone who rarely gets to go to games (because I live over 1200 miles away), I guess I could dump on the student body for not lining up for every game hours in advance or otherwise bending over backwards to get to/into every game. But I appreciate the piece that is being shared. I note that a lot of it is about basketball games, and one point that is raised in the piece is that none of these decisions have involved any kind of prior consultation with the students.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I consider collegiate sports to be first of all for the students of a given school. The competition is among student-athletes, and in many cases is between teams that were originally founded by students as a form of student activity (athletic competition.)

The debate going on here is framed almost entirely based on a premise that collegiate sports are in fact a business, to the point nowadays that the element of student attendance/participation is almost an afterthought. Something has been lost here.

Additionally, I agree with those who have raised the "divide and conquer meme" in this thread - the other people who are getting screwed, generally speaking, by the increasing emphasis on the business of collegiate athletics are the fans in general - and this includes alumni. As John Bacon points out in his new book, at some point something is going to have to give because folks are simply not going to continue to pay the kinds of prices that they are being forced to pay to enjoy college sports.

I was gonna stay out of this whole discussion... But in all the posts on the subject over the last couple weeks, I've not seen this little tidbit brought up. If it was and I missed it, apologies.

Let me preface by saying this applies only to student football game attendance. Basically, you all suck and here's why. You are at that game as a student at the University of Michgan. That means you are there to support your team on the field. Showing up late or not at all is disrespectuf to that team, they deserve better. Want proof? Read this comment from Thomas Gordon in the Akron postgame presser:

Was there an emotional letdown this game?

Gordon: "Well that can be an excuse, but we still expect to come out and execute and compete. We did not do that. But you know, obviously you see the stands at the beginning of the game, but it shouldn't affect you. This is a young team, and we can't let things like that affect the team."

There you have it, right from one of the leaders on the team - the student section sucked. He mans up and accepts it's no valid excuse for a poor performance. But it doesn't change the fact that it was noted and I'd be willing to bet it did make an impression on the team. Probably Akron too. So, leave your lame excuses in the dorm and get to the game.

</rant>

1. I am being provided with an inferior product half the season.  Now due to television, money and other factors, the scheduling in college football has gone to crap. In the Bo Schembechler days, Michigan played titans of college football

In this thread than that crap blog post.

He's disgusted by the reaction of "non-affiliated fans" when a lot of them are alumni.

He thinks the old policy worked, even though the empty seats prove him wrong. But then he thinks the pic from the Northwestern game is "nothing terrible."

As I said above, he's way overrating the memories he'll have from drunken tailgating. That Northwestern game was far more memorable than any tailgate. Unless you run into Kate Upton and get laid in the tent they all kinda blend together,

Why do students get labeled whiny and self-entitled? Because of representatives like this who complain about paying for upgrades he'll never see (though I'm sure he didn't mind the new dorm, labs, and other facilities he didn't pay for. Don't tell him how Social Security or Insurance work). And complaining about free donuts? "Thanks for the hand out but let me tell you how to spend your money on me." Fuck you, really.

He's disgusted by being called such things, but thinks it's ok to throw Devin under the bus. How many of the people complaining about attacks on the student have talked shit about one of the players the last couple of weeks? Show of hands? STFU.

The homework/lab/unexpected engagement thing is tired. 54% of the students don't have something "sprung" on them.

And if you use "totalitarian" in anything like this you might as well have gone full stupid and evoked Hitler.

I have serious misgivings about the English and Communications departments...

I don't get the big deal.. Plenty of other student sections are GA

This discussion made me ashamed for the athletic department and the blog, both.

The purpose of Michigan sports is to provide an entertainment for the Michigan students, and to thus entice more and better students to attend.  Allowing alumni to attend these games appears to have been a mistake, as appears to have been the decision to allow them to be televised.

No amount of "but I paid more for my tickets than the students" can justify scrwwing over students so that non-students can gain a benefit.  Pro teams do all the screwing over of students you could ask for (hell, they don't even offer discounted tickets to a lot of students).  Student tickets at Michigan are not discounted; non-student tickets are inflated because, frankly, non-students shouldn't be at the games at all.

I'm an ex-student, not a student, but I haven't lost sight of why these university sports exist to begin with.  The same, I am afraid, is not true of the empire built by outsiders like DB to take over those sports and "monetize" them in the pursuit of some hard-to-define-and-very-very-expensive-but-I-assure-you-well-worth-selling-our-souls-for goal.

I think this situation can best be summed up as "some people are forgetting what it was like to be in college; party, class, hook up with girls(or guys), repeat 3 more times, graduate.  Those are your priorities in school.   Yes, you may have went to every game back in the '60/'70/'80/'90's but a hell of a lot of those games were not even televised so in order to see them you had to go.  Not everyone puts Sports on a pedestal like we do here on this site, the majority view a game as a social function.

I think the AD got it right by shrinking the size of the Student Section for football when students revolted and didnt buy the tickets alloted to them in response to the GA guidelines but badly miscalculated for Bball (the policy reeks like an attempt to cover their asses).  This despite the fact they tried to reinvent the wheel with these policies in the 1st place, its not like the B1G doesnt have any other stadiums that seat over 100k or anything or a successful bball program up the road which has the type of student section they are trying to replicate.   

This is kind of a funny microcosm (macrocosm?) of the first RR year. Seniors were entitled and didn't embrace the change that may or may not have been for the greater good.

I was a student for the three years RR was the head coach. I am not sure how I would feel about DB jacking around with my tickets, but maybe we should see how it all works out and embrace the change before shitting all over the guy because it "isn't fair?" Seems like a very "Boren" thing to do. It sucks right now, but maybe it is for the greater good?

I completely agree with the students saying it's not right to sell something and then later change the rules of the transaction.  That's not right and they have every reason to be upset over the timing of the announcement and how it was handled.

That being said however this entire issue can be settled farily easily.  Stop selling student tickets at a discounted rate and then allow them to sell/transfer them as they so choose.  Allow the market to dictate pricing for marque games as well as the crapola ones early in the year.  That way the students have the same "skin in the game" as I do and if they choose to show up or not is entirely up them.  My issue is subsidy of lower pricing that I untimately pay for in the form of higher prices only to have the subsidized ticket go unused.

I have four season tickets for football.  I sold the extra two to the ND game for $300 each.  I sold the extra two to the Akron game for $25 each.  The market drove pricing and I have no issue whatsoever with letting the students buy and sell tickets as long as they pay the same price as everyone else.

You cant have it both ways. If you want the subsidy - strings in the form of mandated attendance and resale restrictions come along with it.

As a season ticket holder, and alumnist, I have had to put up with the same inferior games that the author of the article lists.  I agree the scheduling is horrible.  But, I show up.  15 minutes before game time, the rest of the stadium against Akron was full for the most part. 

No one is saying that the students aren't a very important part of the whole game day experience.  The more students that attend, the louder the stadium gets.  What everyone wants is the students to get to the stadium early and cheer loud.  If that happens and Brandon decides to reduce the student section even further then you are justified to complain.  Right now your argument is falling on deaf ears.

To the OP: I'm sorry, but I just could not read the linked opinion piece in its entirety. Perhaps my expectations were too high when you said, "It more eloquently gives the argument ...."  When I began reading the editorial, I almost stopped at the title but granted that an 18 or 19 year old author might think hyperbole was just the ticket.  I continued on and encountered some of the most clumsy and inarticulate prose I've read in some time.  I'm embarrassed for the university and the student body if this is what passes for eloquence these days. Perhaps there's a good argument hidden in there somewhere, but I just could not force myself to read the entire work.  

On Basketball tickets they have been flim-flammed. For upperclassment the change to GA screwed them over on seniority. The non-conference slate, and even in years like last year, the conference slate has been a dud. While Coach Hoke and the team may prefer noon games, 3:30 in September and October is better for fan experience. And for all this their ticket prices have gone up to supposedly cover something they are paying for somewhere else. Not to mention tickets were oversold (only the number available should have been issued by lottery and everyone else refunded).

All that said, I was at the Iowa game for Senior Day last year, the non-student sections were maybe half to 2/3rds full when the band came out. The student section was the same. It was a noon game - the last home game - on a beautiful fall day, and I am sure both students and non-students were enjoying tailgating with friends for the last time that season. Iowa, after all was not supposed to be a competitive opponent.

The difference? Alumni and fans sit in their assigned seats. Students move to where their friends are (who may be from different classes), and were pretty much GA seating themselves. So you didn't notice the checkerboard empty seats as much as and entire upper bowl. The funny thing is: as we saw for the Akron game, the GA policy doesn't fix the appearance. If anything it amplifies it. (Not to mention arriving 4 hours early is really a pain in the ass.)

I don't know the answer. The basketball system sounds like the airlines: some seats and rows can be reserved ahead of time with senority points playing in to when you can reserve, and rest are assigned at checkin (or in this case GA). If they hadn't oversold the flight, maybe that system is a better solution that doesn't result in the demise of the pre-game experience.

The question is what to do about unused tickets and late arrivals. Maybe it is time to consider giving away the no-shows at some point after the game has started at a discounted price.

As in BEFORE they start bitching about what options they have?

Try Duke, specifically for BIG games like UNC:
A) Buy expensive regular tix like everyone else and get to see whatever you want, or
B) Go for free - no cost whatsoever student tix - by camping out in tents weeks in advance. Requires teamwork and coordination (read DEDICATION) among student fans. I.E. if there isn't someone in your tent at all times, GONE to back of line. If majority of tent occupants (6) aren't there for random nightly check-ins, GONE... Or get in Walk-up line 48 hours in advance as 2 person team (1 must always be in line), and HOPE there's even a chance to get in if the tents don't fill up the section - you will NEVER get in for a big game. The whole thing is run by the STUDENT GOVT. it is CLEAR to all students how serious fandom is, and if you ever wonder why the CRAZZIES are what they are, try and wrap your brain around this.

Too much to handle? How about Kentucky? Simply a lottery. You must show up on the designated night and HOPE to be called in the lottery. Only then can you buy student season tix. There is NO "just buying them". It's not hard to imagine that with such limited quantities, people (other students) are chomping at the bit to get any tix the original winners don't want. I.E. ensuring a passionate, dedicated to showing up student body at games.

In this day and age of athletics, UM is lucky to have 2-3 sports it's students care so much about, but even the students must realize that space is at a premium. If anything, the loose, generous, entitlement type system in the past was horribly outdated. Welcome to the new world. Student perceptions will change, albeit grudgingly, but if UM proves to stay succesful in its sports, no one will care soon.

Until the AD institutes general admission for the season ticket holders that sit across from the student section its all horseshit taking advantage of the students,  I was at almost every game last year and for pretty much every single game that section was not full at tip, why aren't those ticket holders held to the same standard?

Can we just all agree that people born from 1995 - present day are probably the worst generation ever? God help us.