We Out: A student view of the new ticket policies

Submitted by Michigan Eaglet on

I know that the new tickets policies for football and basketball have been discussed at length here, but this article has been getting a lot publicity today by many Michigan students, especially among basketball season ticket holders. It more eloquently gives the argument as to why the author and many other students (including myself) have sold back our student basketball tickets and how this athletic department continues to erode their image in the eyes of students and future alumni. It's decently long, but worth the read, especially by some of the fan base that are easy to dismiss the students as apathetic.

http://droptheglovesblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/we-out-the-totalitarianism-of-the-michigan-athletic-department/

Owl

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:34 PM ^

Do you use this reasoning for everything you consume?

Even if I grant what you're saying, that still doesn't justify the level of vitriol this topic inspires in some people. So at most I'll grant that there's a week 'should' involved, but not anywhere near strong enough to warrant words like "disgusting" and "disgraceful." 

Blueisgood

September 23rd, 2013 at 7:39 PM ^

I'm not a student or an alumni. I didn't even read the article, but I did read some of the quotes some of you have put on here from said article. The one that sticks out to me the most is the one about future alumni not donating. That is going to be exactly what happens. The Stephen Ross' will not be around forever. It's got to be a never ending flow and all screwing with the current students is going to disrupt that flow in the future.



For me, the "dynamic" pricing is crap. $107 for a ticket to Indiana is robbery. It's pricing out the average fan, IMO. I know I'm not a student or an alumni so I don't really matter. If I wanna go I'll pay. But I'm at the point now where I do wanna go, but I won't pay it. I'll save the $500+ I spend to go to buy a bigger tv, or a new gun or something. And the 6 other people that go with me will do the same. It's starting to look like this year will be the first year my group will not go to a game in 8 years.

bo_lives

September 23rd, 2013 at 7:51 PM ^

I bought tickets and am leaning 90% to a refund. I'll be a grad student in the winter and I don't envision having time to trek over to Crisler to see every single game vs. Western Tennessee Valley Tech... meaning I likely wouldn't even be allowed in the building for the MSU game.

Glancing through the comments it doesn't look like I'm alone when I say I'm growing increasingly disillusioned with not only the AD, but the overall state of affairs for college athletics in general.

I mean, we're still talking about a University athletic team, right? How much longer can we keep calling it that? The consensus on this blog seems to be that most students are evil, pesky, lazy brats and should either submit to Dave Brandon or be eliminated. I'd say a majority also seem to believe college athletes should be paid more than the current value of their scholarships. But once you get rid of the students and turn the athletes into professionals, what are you left with?

I'd say the answer to that is pretty clear: you get a minor league NFL team that  happens to have the same name as a University by a historical anomaly. There will be no next generation of die-hard alums flooding the forums on MGoBlog in 2033. "College football" in its own right will have ceased to exist.

Clarence Beeks

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:05 PM ^

"I'll be a grad student in the winter and I don't envision having time to trek over to Crisler..."



I love when I hear this from students. I know this may be hard to believe, but you're never again (or at least not for a long, long time) going to have as much free time as you do right now. I'm not picking on you with this, and don't really intend this against you personally (because I don't know your individual situation), but there are reasons why most people would gladly go back to college or grad school, and the free time that you didn't think you had at the time is one of the top reasons.

TheGhostofChappuis

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:11 PM ^

"you're never again going to have as much free time as you do right now."

Everyone's experience is different.  Some have lots of free time, and some have almost none. Plenty of people legitimately cannot go to a game against Blumpkin University on a Tuesday night.

Clarence Beeks

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:47 PM ^

It's certainly true that everyone's experience is different, but I hear the "I don't have enough time" thing from students, who actually do and they just can't manage their time appropriately, so many times that it's just laughable now. It's all about priorities and choices. Even if you can manage your time, sooner or later in life you just can't do everything you want to and you just have to make some choices. We've all been there (or will get there) at some point.

bo_lives

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:20 PM ^

I'll start off saying I really have no idea what your undergrad experience was like. But it seems to me that you're generalizing that to the entire student population, across all degrees and schools - which is utterly absurd.

You seem to believe that just having the label of "student" means all you have to do is go to a handful of classes and study from time to time. I'm not sure where you came up with that assumption. I have many friends who are current graduate students in the sciences and are in the lab doing research at LEAST 100 hours/week. Many of them have done summer internships in industry and they always come back marvelling at how much free time they had under a regular workday schedule.

Long story short, college is as busy as you make it. The athletic department seems to be pushing out students who would like to participate in campus sporting events occasionally but would rather devote most of their time to participating in far more productive activities.

Clarence Beeks

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:42 PM ^

You seem to believe that just having the label of "student" means all you have to do is go to a handful of classes and study from time to time."



Nope. I don't believe that at all.



"I have many friends who are current graduate students in the sciences and are in the lab doing research at LEAST 100 hours/week."



And they probably aren't the ones complaining on sports message boards about how they don't have enough time to go to sporting events.



"Many of them have done summer internships in industry and they always come back marvelling at how much free time they had under a regular workday schedule."



That's because they were interns. That "regular workday" changes just a wee bit when it's your actual job.

bo_lives

September 23rd, 2013 at 9:01 PM ^

I didn't poll anyone on how much time they spend on MGoBlog, but honestly writing these responses takes 2 minutes each so I don't see what you're getting at. I can say for sure that I have heard plenty of complaints from legitimately busy people about not having enough time to go to a basketball game against Baby Seal U. on Tuesday night in February.

Also, your obvious biases are showing once again with regards to internships. I can't say this is the case for all internships, but the people I'm talking about have said that their managers - who always left work earlier - literally ended up begging them to go home early and have a life.

If you knew what you were talking about you'd know that "shorter hours" is considered one of the primary perks of working in industry vs academia (go ahead and google industry vs academia hours).

Anyway, I do concede that having this conversation with you, while not very time consuming, is still an utter waste of time. so Adios.

Clarence Beeks

September 23rd, 2013 at 9:21 PM ^

"If you knew what you were talking about you'd know that "shorter hours" is considered one of the primary perks of working in industry vs academia (go ahead and google industry vs academia hours)."



This is, by far, my absolute favorite part of any of your posts. Talking about making assumptions about the person you are responding to (which, recall, I said at the outset I wasn't saying any of what I said toward you in particular)...

M-Wolverine

September 24th, 2013 at 12:42 AM ^

That band members take "real majors," spend many more hours before and after games on Saturday, go on road trips, and oh, practice all week. But they're not all flunking out left and right or taking underwater basket weaving. So it's a crap excuse.

Yes, if you're sending 100 hours a week doing something you shouldn't be buying season tickets and should be buying a ticket for the one or two games you can attend.

Clarence Beeks

September 24th, 2013 at 9:13 PM ^

Yeah, that's my fault. I wasn't very clear and it wasn't coming across right. It's actually a great example of how what I've said is being taken the wrong way. I'm not comparing your engineer friend to you in the lab, I was comparing you in the lab to you in ten years. I didn't articulate this well at all.

Bb011

September 23rd, 2013 at 11:57 PM ^

Compare your average fan and what they do and how much free time they have to a medical/dental student. It is a lot more. I'm not saying all students have less free time than all non-students, matter of fact it doesn't matter. What does matter is that when a student has 6 exams in a 2 day span they are not going to be making it out to the South Carolina State game...How can you not understand that?

Clarence Beeks

September 24th, 2013 at 12:14 AM ^

It isn't that I don't understand that; it's that we aren't talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about the average student versus the average fan. I'm talking about the average student versus what they will admit about themselves and their perception of how busy they thought they were as a student compared to how busy they are now. Yes, that average dental student is busier than the average fan, but that average dental student has more time now then he will when he is balancing a dental practice, a family, and trying to maintain a semblance of a "social life". That average dental student, 5 years removed from school will (and I do say "will", not "may") look back on how much time they had in school and laugh at how busy they thought they were. It really doesn't matter what school they are in, as it's not a comparison between individuals, but rather a statement about an individual.

Owl

September 24th, 2013 at 12:22 AM ^

Wait, let me get this straight. People are generally bad at assessing how busy they are (tending to overestimate). So our perceptions about how busy we are are unreliable. Therefore, we should rely on the perceptions of older-us about how busy they are ? What makes older-us better at assessing how busy they are? Perhaps hindsight makes us better evaluators, but only about things in the past! So of course you'd think you were busier in the present compared to the past.  

Clarence Beeks

September 24th, 2013 at 12:50 AM ^

"So of course you'd think you were busier in the present compared to the past."



That's not necessarily accurate, or even really relevant. For example, it isn't that someone is busier now than they have been at all points in the past, but rather that they thought (at the time) that they were unbearably busy in school only to find that significant periods after school (although not necessary all periods after school, which is what makes your statement inaccurate) were far busier. It's not really (or even, at all) about past v. present; it's about differentiating between different periods in the past.

Bb011

September 24th, 2013 at 5:46 PM ^

I thought you meant that medical/dental/etc students should be at every game because they should "be good fans" , which is what pretty much everyone is saying in this thread. I didn't realize that you weren't trying to apply it to the athletic events, but said it more as a separate statement.

Clarence Beeks

September 24th, 2013 at 1:04 AM ^

Of course they do; that's never going to change, and will only get worse. Here's the deal. I wasn't saying that I (or any other graduate/professional) is busier than you, or any other individual student. What I was saying is that most likely YOU will look back at YOURSELF and have the realization that you weren't nearly as busy as you thought you were and will wish that you would have done the things that you thought you were to busy to do. This was never intended as a "a you're just a student, and I'm a working professional, so I'm so much busier than you" thing. The fact is, a lot of students are almost certainly busier than me. That doesn't mean, though, that they won't be busier as professionals than they were as students. They almost certainly will be. Obviously, I could have articulated my point far better initially.

Bb011

September 24th, 2013 at 9:48 PM ^

You explain yourself much better here. Initially it seems like you are attacking students by saying you are much busier(along with all other graduates) than the students are which means they should go to the games, which you really aren't saying at all. Your just  comparing them to their future selves.

Setshot

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:16 PM ^

This is my senior year at U of M and have attended nearly every game since I arrived on campus. My freshman year I was one of the few people in the whole arena (not just student section) at tipoff every game. The number of games I have missed through my first 3 years can easily be counted on one hand, and the games I missed were due to reasons that were more important than sports. I am in the bleachers early for every game, sat in the front 2 rows at the final four and national championship, and am a big time Michigan sports fan. The main problem I have with this is the athletic department needs to understand that sometimes it's not possible to attend every game. What if one of the most dedicated student fans gets really ill, or has some form of family emergency where they miss two games in one week and has to miss the Indiana game this year? Or get shitty seats to the state game? My point is some things in life are bigger than sports, and having to miss games in the past due to these things myself, I will feel terrible for myself and others if they have to miss out on Michigan sporting events because the athletic department screws us over.

To all of you bitching and complaining, and saying students can stop whining and need to just show up, need to tell that to the students who aren't the dedicated fans. The dedicated ones are there every night cheering on the maize and blue that we all have grown to love, and now we have the possibility of getting screwed out of tickets because other students don't care as much as we do. How would you feel as a michigan football season ticket holder who has attended nearly every game for 30 years if the athletic department gave your ticket to a game to somebody else because you couldn't show up the previous week? I bet not very well.

TheGhostofChappuis

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:40 PM ^

The bottom line here is that it really doesn't mater who is right.  The athletic department is repeatedly angering many students, and that is bad for everyone.  A better effort needs to made to not piss people off.

The department should have announced this as a possible change to the student ticket policy after this season and soliticed comments/suggestions from students on the change.  

allezbleu

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:34 PM ^

BASKETBALL: 

For most games there will be more than 1500 students not showing up. So just what exactly is so bad about giving Michigan State tickets to the most loyal fans?? 

If you want to attend 3 games a year, just buy tickets on stubhub. Don't take up a student ticket and then not attend 85% of the games.

 

FOOTBALL:

There is a culture of being fashionably late to football games, especially amongst the greek crowd (I was often guilty of this when I was a student). If you want to create more memories then start tailgating 30 minutes earlier and show up on time. Or do what I did and continue tailgating after the games. Partying 14 hours every Saturday vs partying 14 hours and 30 minutes won't affect the quality of your "memories" with your friends. I promise you.

This weak schedule crap is total BS. Students don't show up in good numbers or on time for non-marquee B10 games either.

This attitude of being needed to be "courted" by the athletic department in order to be loyal fans or future donors is pathetic.

TheLastHarbaugh

September 23rd, 2013 at 8:34 PM ^

It's funny to me that you have a great deal of crotchety alums bitching about the students with regard to this change in policy, because if the AD started jerking around the alums' season tickets in the manner they're doing it to the students...

Oh. My. God.

The bitching and whining and outrage and complaining would be endless.

Every resident of the state of Michigan would be able to hear a low murmur.

The whining would be so relentless that the AD would immediately revert back to the old policies faster than you can grab a seat cushion.

I say all of this as an alum.