After the football game on Saturday afternoon, I had the chance to speak candidly with a member of the team. He asked me what was up with the empty student section at kickoff.
For any of the other 500 or so odd fans like myself stuck on the concourse outside of sections O and P, there was a very simple answer: The new procedure for getting students into the stadium before the game was a total failure.
In case you missed it, the athletic department's latest plan for getting students into the stadium in the most efficient manner left literally hundreds of irritated student ticket holders who wanted to see the start of the game stuck behind a barricade of Per Mar staff and police officers, who were letting no more than a trickle of students in to watch the game at a painstakingly slow rate.
From what we were told at the game, students were being seated row by row so that the problem of students taking up more than one seat at a time would be remedied.
After the game, Vince Sweeney, the Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Relations, explained that the changes were made because the student section appeared to be full against Akron when in reality 1,500 student tickets never made it to the gate. There were concerns of problems arising in future games when more of the student tickets are used.
In theory, that was a decent idea for solving the issue.
In reality, the athletic department inadvertently created a much more serious problem: Several hundred students were forced to stand and wait for as long as a half an hour on the concourse while precious time melted off the game clock. The folks around me all turned over their ticket vouchers at 10:50 a.m. and were not allowed to get into their seats until 11:25 a.m. By halftime, I took note that all but 10 rows in sections K and L were still empty. If Camp Randall ever hit capacity on Saturday afternoon, it wasn't until half of the game was already over.
If you talk to anyone who was stuck out there, mob mentality nearly overcame the swarm of students, who were beginning to realize that all that stood between them and their game were two guys in uniform. Several chants broke out from the horde, containing explicit remarks about the new wristbands and extreme irritation about missing a game they had paid good money to see. It honestly surprises me that a riot did not break out and no one got hurt.
More importantly, it was embarrassing to know that the football team ran out of the tunnel to find K, L, M, and N all empty in the student section. The whole north end of the arena reflected blinding white light off of empty steel benches. How ridiculous is it for our beloved football team to start the game with the most raucous, energizing section of the stadium barren and quiet? Angry students aside, this latest effort to effectively put students in their seats likely took wind out of the sails of the players on the sideline who appreciate the hearty support that students provide.
Now, to be fair, I understand that the athletic department wants to have every ticket holder in a seat and I am guessing that they were not anticipating such a debacle. My suggestion to them would be to not try to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place. This whole wristband business is ridiculous. The former procedure of exchanging student vouchers for tickets worked pretty darn well. After all, you can only issue as many tickets for a section as you have seats, and if there is any question as to whether a students belongs in the seat he or she is standing on, ask them for their ticket.
I am aware that there are complaints from non-students about this procedure, too. I've seen the thirty-something, one-time game watchers who bought vouchers from students planning to watch a game while comfortably squatting on their assigned bench numbers. They're really the only ones who ever had a problem with this procedure in the past. And frankly, they should have known what they were getting themselves into, buying a ticket to a football game in a boisterous student section like ours.
Believe me, giving out tickets for vouchers as was done in the past will irritate far fewer fans than either of the methods enforced in the past two weeks.
Regardless of whether we return to the old procedure or not, I hope the athletic department does something to clear up the seating issue by the time Ohio State rolls into town. If they don't, I know that for my own safety I'm going to find a way to steer clear of the student section concourse come kickoff. For a game that big, tempers likely won't hold and the angry mob that we saw for the Marshall game will probably not exhibit any patience.
Were you one of the fans enraged at the delays that took place Saturday? If you want to vent, e-mail Andy at avansistine@wisc.edu
