Suggestions for Poor Attendance in Student Section
By Larry Burton
Saturday, October 5th, 2013 was a bright and sunny day with the crisp of autumn in the air. It was homecoming and the perfect time to grab a date and watch a game. Yes, at Alabama it was a perfect day for football.
So where were the students?
It’s a embarrassment for the university and Nick Saban thinks of it almost as an insult that so many empty seats are always appearing in that one section of the stadium. Even the press is mocking the situation. Here’s a quote from the local newspaper writer, Cecil Hurt (@CecilHurt) tweeted at 2:09 PM on Sat, Oct 05, 2013: Tide student section just forced a Ga. State time out. He was really yelling loud.
So what’s a school to do?
They talked about shrinking the student section and why not? There are thousands of people who would have gladly bought those seats.
But here’s another idea. There are always lots of people outside the stadium wanting tickets or just tailgating without tickets. Since it would be easy to count the numbers admitted into the student section and management would know how many empty seats there are, why not admit people into the stadium for free to sit in the student section in the unused seats? After all, some student already paid for it and isn’t using it.
If a student isn’t in the stadium by say 10 minutes before kickoff, that seat is up for grabs to be given away or maybe sold for a deeply discounted price.
The person getting that seat will spend money on concessions and other things and the university could raise a little more revenue.
Are there students how are wanting to go that didn’t have a ticket? Sell those ticket like airlines sell seats on planes – overbook. Sell 25% more tickets to students that there are seats and tell the late comers that, “Sorry, all full, better luck next time”. That would have the stands full at kickoff.
I’m sure there are other things that could be done and the sad thing is that apparently nothing is being done, or nothing that works. When you have a waiting list of 10,000 people waiting for tickets and 10 empty seats in the student section, it’s not going to be long until the university starts taking seats away from the students.
So students, either get your butts in the seats or have them disappear.
Larry is an award winning writer whose work has appeared in almost every college football venue. Now he primarily writes for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter
