I Got The No-Ticket Blues

Well, I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but I was hoping much later. There's already a problem with the new football ticket distribution system.

Those of you who went to school here might recall the Miami game last year, where many students who wanted tickets, including most of our Wesley group, simply did not get them. This year, the athletic department moved to an online lottery for determining who gets student tickets and who doesn't. It worked like a charm for the first two games, but now, due to the wonders of randomness, about 10 out of 30 of our Wesley folks did not receive a ticket - myself included.

Tom speaks out about this at TSPN, and his thoughts echo mine for the most part. I think that, quite simply, every student who wants a ticket to a football game should get one. We're the whole reason the football team exists, and we're often the biggest driving force behind making the stadium loud and imposing for our opponents. We buy concessions like giant turkey legs. We buy lots of drinks in those plastic cups so we can stock up our cupboards. We help make Lane Stadium what it is during the home games.

I know that there's essentially a set number of student tickets for each game, and that number stays pretty much fixed, but I also know that it's far fewer than the number of students we have here. Not every student is going to want to go to the game, but there's got to be a way of determining and satisfying student demand on a game-by-game basis.

Is there a "perfect" system for ticket distribution on this large a scale? Probably not. Maybe a season ticket/pay system like what Tom suggests in his article is the way to go. Maybe I could have avoided this by getting season tickets for this year, but I love the excitement about not knowing exactly where I'm going to sit for the next game. It's part of the fun. When I find out that I, a student who paid my athletic fee, am simply not going to be able to go to the game at all, the excitement can quickly turn to cynicism. I hope the athletic department can keep tweaking this system so that future generations of Hokies won't have to watch all their school's home games on TV.