GA Football Seating is no more
https://csg.umich.edu/executive-branch/executive-committee/press-releas…
They are getting rid of the general admission seating and going with a hybrid of "attendance driven reserved seating" and class standing. Thoughts?
Personally I think the new policy is near-optimal. Only thing I'd change is to reward seniority a bit more, for example by using a points formula of:
Priority = last year pts + 50% 2 years ago pts + 25% 3 years ago points.
That way the senior who has attended for the past 3 years but may have missed the 30minute deadline once or twice is not usurped by underclassman.
So basically this will be a different kind of clusterfuck.
And, really, $295 for student football tickets...
I could see that for the 2015 schedule but for the BS this season? Uh...
$295 for this schedule is absurd. As a 6th year student (undergrad + grad school), I think I'd get pretty good seats but can't justify the price for essentially 1 big game (penn state).
You think $295 for 7 games is high? I understand they are mostly crappy games, but 42 bucks is not bad in 2014.
Just never graduate. I pay $600 a seat just to be able to buy the tix at around $95. But to me it's worth it. I love football Saturdays.
$295 + tuition
Barely any school throws in free football tix these days with tuition. That would be nice, though.
It just seems reasonable to me. But for the accountants out there, I wonder if $42 is reasonable? Compared to other tickets around the Big House for $95? I paid $10/ticket for student tickets in 1993. The other tickets were around $25.
What would be a reasonable price for student tickets?
$95? Like the other reply said, you must have no experience with the student ticket market (which is understandable), but honestly, I doubt even regular tickets were fetching that much (except ND). The secondary market for student tickets is not even close to that. If you were patient last year, you could have very easily gotten every ticket outside of ND/OHIO for no more than $10, and even Ohio was going for face value with it being spring break. $42 isn't completely unreasonable, but for next year, when I can just as easily get them for under 100$ from other students, it's not realistic.
I forget what the others were. $85? I just wonder what people think would be a reasonable price for tickets in 2014, regardless of if we go undefeated or lose a lot.
I didn't know they were comparing them to the secondary market. That would be a good place to go for cheap tix. I'm just too old and lazy to worry about that.
depending on how michigan does leading up to the penn st game, i bet you could get tickets for $50 to that game, and find tickets between $20-30 for the rest.
So if I don't pay the $295 and just try and pickup tickets on the street for cheap, am I going to be stuck sitting with a bunch of the person's friends that I bought it from?
and follow rules and all that lame stuff.
You need at least two friends to buy season tickets. Then they can go into the section and have one guy go back up to the concourse with both tickets to fetch the others. Rinse and repeat.
Also I didn't just say this.
I was paying under $20/ ticket and if I couldn't make a game (I missed 2 in 5 years) the tickets were easy to transfer. This is a major increase to over double the price for students along with all the other increases in tuition. A 225% increase in price is not because of inflation.
Comparing the costs to what the rest of the stadium pays is ignorant to me. Students, who are already paying 10's of thousands per year in tuition, should be encouraged to go to games, and pricing them out not a smart endeaver for the athletic department. Once they graduate, they pay the same as you, and this is just.
How is no one else seeing this???
Once again the Athletic Department overcomplicated this and still raised football season ticket prices for a shitty card.
More ushers are once again going to be required to escort groups to their specific seating arrangements and yell at students that continue moving around to see other friends, even during pregrame.. (because this is soviet school bus and you are walked to your seat and must never move)
They're gonna need ropes once again to plot out the blocks of seating for each group of friends because the various bench seating does not make it simple for ushers to be Nazis from a distance and they'd have a tough time knowing WTF is going on..
If the chief concern of the Athletic Department and students was to allow students to sit with friends in a hassle free environment (as they said was the main issue) they'd simply allow students to show up and sit wherever the hell they wanted. This is going to look like a reserved seating version of the Notre Dame game instead of a show up and get the Notre Dame game roping system like happened this past year
Ugh..
This doesn't fix shit.
Sounds like a good plan. I like the SuperFan concept. I'm not sure I'd necessarily want to be seated down by field level, though.
in different years, as well as up in row 80 for two. The best were my 5th year around row 20. Down low is a lot of fun, but it was always really hard to determine how good a play really was. I'm guessing with the tradition now of celbrations in the corner, seating down low is still a desired spot to be.
I guess I'm a SuperFan. Yay! Im still expecting another massive dropoff in student attendance next year, however. For obvious reasons.
Holy shit!! DB listened!?
I can hear Brian laughing maniacally.
The one tweak I would make is to allow the people or groups with "Superfan" status to pick where they want to be. Not everyone wants to be in the very front. I thought you got better views of the game from around row 25-30 or so.
They can just move up and sit wherever. It's not that packed in rows 30-40.
Sure there's reserved seating but we all know the enforcement of that is loose at best.
What is the view like, in the third row of Section 31? Never in my life have I had any desire to sit there. Uh, stand there.
Who in their right mind wouldn't rather be in about Row 50 of Section 25? Where you could, like, see the game?
Read the article. I think I like it
I don't like class-based seating, but I'm digging the attendance points idea. Reward the people who come early and to all the games. As long as it's by section (a la basketball) and not by individual seats, I think they've got something here.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned in the comments so far is that the "hybrid" system applies only for 2014. After that, priority is based entirely on the previous season's points.
On the one hand, that's great that you can have a mixed group and still sit together in "premium" seats without a penalty for having a sophomore in the group. Also, the low rows will be dominated by people who show up, not giant groups of late arriving drunkards who happen to be seniors. And I like that it gives you "one free game" to miss, and doesn't penalize you for not attending non-football events.
On the other hand, it would be nice if class standing added a few points somehow, to prevent someone who, say, takes a semester abroad, from totally losing their priority.
What will be interesting is how points are assigned - by ticket, or by M-Card (that is, do the points go to the original purchaser or the person who actually uses the ticket)? Doing it by ticket would seem to be the way to go, since it would incentivize students to sell or give away tickets they aren't using, and make sure whoever they give it to shows up.
I would agree that getting some bonus points based on class, or seasons attended, or even both would be nice. It could be small and still be worth it. Three points for a senior, two for junior, and one for sophomore.
Starting with the 2015 season, all reserved seat locations will be decided strictly by attendance points. Attendance points are accumulated for each game attended (3 points). Arriving 30 minutes prior to kickoff earn an additional three (3) points, for a total of six (6) points. There will be no class standing-based perks or points starting with the 2015 football season. A group’s standing (and seat location) will be calculated by an average group score from the previous year’s point total.
Students can earn up to 36 points for the 2014 season, the equivalent of showing up to six (6) games at least 30 minutes prior to kickoff. Lochmann stated that the athletic department would only count six games instead of all seven, providing students with the benefit of the doubt for situations like holidays, student break, weather, etc., that can affect their attendance.
Why was this ever so difficult to figure out?
This is the best and simplest system.
This is much better than the screwed-up policy they had last year.
I do find it interesting, how for smallish groups (say 4-8 people), you may have to dump a friend/roommate who will significantly bring down your average. "Sorry, Braden. You'll have to sit with another group of people b/c you only attended two games last year." The peer pressure (to go to games) and resentment (if you are shunned) should be worth a few MGoBoard board posts.
I think that peer pressure is a good thing.
Frankly, I was pissed at my roommates when they would want to have that extra beer and miss the band coming out. This gives people like me another weapon to say "smuggle a airplane bottle in and lets go." Or, you boot them.
The good thing is it is an average. You don't automatically get the lowest priority. If you have several people in a group that routinely showed up late last year, then don't be in their group if you want the best possible seats!
Honestly if they're enough of a friend that you want to spend 7 fall Saturdays with them and would actually feel bad kicking them out, them being in your group is more important than the marginal benefit of being a couple rows lower.
Or you could just kick 'em out and try to sneak 'em in.
I wouldn't care about a couple rows (who would?) but I'd care about getting there for the band's entrance.
And if my friend is any kind of friend at all, he would accept that is probably more of a priority than one more beer.
But then, my best friends were the ones who got that and were on the same page. By senior year I found my group of friends that partied before (maybe started a little earlier) and was still able to make the band's entrance.
Sorry, all the complaining and whining made me drown out these types of threads. But I'm glad we've found something that works.
As an Athletics Administrator (we don't sponsor football) I'd be interested to see everyones thoughts.
Is this what you all had before the recent changes that made everyone go crazy? If not, what was that system compared to this one.
Lastly, will this solve the weak attendance from students (for non-rivalry games), make it worse, or no impact?
Before, in my time in the last 2000s, it was based on seniority and a bit of randomness.
If you were in a group of seniors that had a freshman in it, you were given freshman priority - which this fixes in a fair manner (average seniority).
Also, you weren't guaranteed better seats because of groups and puzzle-pieces blocks of people together. I never got tickets in a group and I routinely had better tickets that many groups of people with higher seniority. My senior year my tickets were in row 17, so there's never any guarantee you would get to the front row or even the front 6-10 rows.
Sounds better than the old system. But I haven't been to a game in over a decade, so what do I know. Apparently the stadium now allows you to park noodles nearby. The world is just different.
As long as we don't see anything like the Akron game again. That was...uh loss for words.
For instance, Exhibit A in the "New Improved, Focus Grouped, Test Marketed, Analytically-Driven Home Schedule" includes Appalachian State.
MGrowOld will be requesting his season tickets back in no time
This is only the beginning, man. DB has many more postives to give us.
Decades of sell-outs and part of the largest attendance in America every game. I'm sure this should all be credited to alumni and other fans right?
People need to recognize that some of the moves the AD has made and our performance on the field are enough to turn off many fanbases and students are a part of that fanbase. I'm not saying that more students shouldn't show up to the games, and show up on time, but the amount of disgust directed at students on this board is seriously misguided
And yet it will continue to be the only section of the stadium that consistently makes noise and creates any kind of homefield advantage.
I was there for two games in 2013; their game versus Florida A&M (disappointing that the Rattlers' band was still banned) and San Diego State.
And it was NOTHING like the Michigan students' pathetic showing. They were mostly filled for "Quick Cals" with the team and coaches which is BEFORE their band comes out and like 15-20 minutes before the team comes out for the national anthem.
So those were two low-grade opponents, early in the season on summer-like beautiful days. And still they had their stadium filled, that early.
It is almost a mirror image of Michigan, where the PSD-paying regulars are there in time to fill the place for the band to "take the field." And the students are laggards. At Ohio Stadium, the two endzone Block O sections are the ones that fill up early.