Now that the cursed lottery is finally gone, the time has come for Wisconsin student fans to stand and deliver.
Oh? You thought that you had no responsibility in all of this?
See, the lottery took control away from students and now it's been returned. For the last two years the complaint has been, ""But, I'm such a big Badger fan, how could I not get tickets?""
The problem is that fans don't always show up. Week after week in the fall, the student section has been half full at kickoff, even at big night games. Speak with most seniors and super-seniors and they'll share with you the fact that the student section is less organized and simply worse than it was a few seasons ago.
For that, the lottery was partially blamed since it did not reward the most dedicated students. Now that impediment is gone, but does anyone really think the student section will improve?
There is a sense of entitlement among many Badger football fans that the privilege of receiving the heavily discounted tickets is in fact a right. The answer always seems to be that it's OK to miss every kickoff in the pursuit of one extra game of beer pong.
The athletic department does not need to give 12,500 tickets to students.
Student tickets will cost $133 next season, whereas regular season tickets go for $273 a pop, and that is before any kind of required donations and auxiliary fees.
Hell, it might be smart for the athletic department to shrink the student section until people get the idea that they should at least attempt to come on time.
Real fans actually care what happens over the course of a game. They even treat the game as (gasp!) the centerpiece of a gameday experience.
Instead, many Badger fans share the sentiments of one senior who e-mailed this newspaper saying of his gameday, ""I will show up around noon and won't really care that I'm missing the first quarter plus, once I'm at the game, I'll be socializing and not paying attention at all.""
Let's set a simple ground rule: if you don't plan to arrive at the stadium at least 10-15 minutes before kickoff (to avoid the bottleneck at game time), you should never talk about how great of a Badger fan you are.
By doing that, you cheapen the idea of Badger fanhood in every way.
And another concern stemming from the new ticket policy (and the old one) is that a student can still buy season tickets just to sell them. Money is a better motivator than fanhood, so rest assured, this will not change.
And when push comes to shove, students don't want it to change.
If your sister has a wedding, you don't want to have to eat the ticket. If your best friend who goes to Minnesota is in town, you want to be able to go down the hall and buy a neighbor's ticket.
Scalping is a necessary evil in this system. No matter how much you might want to avoid that fact, it's the truth.
So the take-home point from this change in system should be obvious. Show the athletic department there is some value in student fans (i.e. raucous noise, present and energetic throughout the game), lest they take this newfound control of tickets away from students once more. Show them we deserve to be listened to.
Who knows? Maybe the athletic department will realize it can get more money from fans who show up on time and then leave a few thousand more students outside of Camp Randall on gamedays.
Hopefully a few of them would even get to see kickoff… on TV.
Still excited to miss huge portions of Badger football games in hopes of reaching even greater levels of intoxication? Send your not-so-righteously angry e-mails to Breiner@wisc.edu.
