For the second year in a row, the stars have aligned for our Alabama Crimson Tide football team. After a tough loss at home last weekend, the football gods looked favorably upon our storied program with the upsets of Kansas State and Oregon, flipping the college football scene on its axis. Now it seems that, barring any major disasters, the SEC title game will play host to what is essentially a BCS championship play in game.
The “Road to 15” is still alive this season, so for us, all seems right in the world once again. Or does it? Unfortunately, as our football team makes their way out to Atlanta to play in what could almost be considered a home game for UGA, a vast majority of our student body will not get the opportunity to cheer them on inside the Georgia Dome. This past week, University Athletics announced that out of the 16,000 SEC championship tickets they received, only 1,920 of them would be available to be purchased by students.
With such a small number of tickets being allotted, any student with less then 96 hours completed here at the University is ineligible to purchase a ticket through our athletic department. Of course this doesn’t mean those who don’t have the required hours can’t attend the game altogether, just be prepared to shell out a pretty penny to attend. (The least expensive ticket available currently on Stubhub.com is $300 for an upper deck seat.) So for those of us who can’t afford to pay such exorbitant prices for a ticket, the magic and excitement of attending the championship game as a student will not be possible.
While I am not naive enough to suggest that all 16,000 of the University’s tickets should be received by members of our student body, I do believe it to be possible for a broader range of students to have the opportunity to purchase one. It’s understood that the University must take care of faculty, staff and most importantly, our deep pocketed alumni, but it’s hard to understand why such a small number of us as students were eligible to purchase the face value $60 through our own school.
Those alumni who received the tickets through donations to the University obviously are more readily able to purchase higher price tickets through other sources then we are as college students. It makes it all the more frustrating is that this isn’t the only time our student body has been given the short end of the stick when it comes to big football games this season. After a large number of us signed up last spring for tickets to our season opener against Michigan, we were notified a week before the game that not all of us would receive actual seats and instead would be given a “Spirit Pass” standing-room only ticket.
It seems that we as students are on the bottom of our athletic department’s list in providing access to attend our football team’s games which are played by fellow members of our student body, not alumni. Bottom line: We love our football team and all the success they have had throughout their history, especially as of late. It’s not a secret that our school is football crazy, and all we as students would like is to have the opportunity to be a part of the excitement of games like the SEC championship; one of the most important games of the entire college football season.
It’s seasons like this that will be a part of the continued legacy of our historic football program, and I think I can speak for the entire student body in saying that attending games like the one in the Georgia Dome in a few weeks is something we would remember for a lifetime. In the future I hope the University will allow for a bigger portion of our passionate student body a chance to experience games like this in person.
Brad Tipper is a junior majoring in economics and political science. His column runs biweekly on Mondays.
