The Sport of Kings
I think it’s time to congratulate the colleges of division I-A, especially the most prominent teams, for making it more difficult, and considerably more expensive, to attend a college game than to go see a professional football game.
To the die-hard fan, nothing generates more excitement than game day, and the game itself comprises only part of the day’s hoopla. Pre-game tailgating and post-game partying both provide fans with additional euphoria, and even a loss by the home team usually falls short of completely raining out anyone’s personal parade.
During the Middle Ages of college sports, schools participated with “student athletes,” meaning, real students who played for the school’s honor. Just about any college fielding a team offered adequate competition, including Ivy Leagues schools, as well as the military academies. Of course, bigger was always better, giving some advantage to schools with more students, and thus a greater pool of potential athletes, but the dragons lacked enough fire to completely incinerate their lesser opponents.
After a while, college administrators figured out that, rather than simply picking players from the student body, the school could increase its chances of winning by shopping around for players and attempting to lure them into the student body. Coaches at major colleges now started spending the off season traveling the country, visiting the homes of the most promising high school prospects, explaining to the student’s parents the advantages of attending XYZ University. The biggest advantage, obviously, was that of attending school on a fully-paid scholarship! Yes, he would probably have to maintain a “C” average, not a difficult task for general studies, or sports-related curricula, resulting in what soon became fondly called, a “jockstrap degree.” In many cases, the teaching staff understood that the student would stand no chance of receiving a grade less than required, a minor detail first practiced at the high school level by some schools.
Recruiting quickly went out of control, and a number of schools faced probation, imposed by the NCAA, for improper recruiting, gifts to athletes and/or their families, and various other infractions. The boosters, not to be denied their teams’ successes, took the reins, stuffing players’ mailboxes with anonymous donations. This practice continues today, and most scholarship athletes cruise around town in cars they could never afford to buy with their own resources. For the most part, the NCAA just looks the other way. To say, for example, that Florida hosts six professional football teams hardly strains one’s imagination. The total could soon rise to seven.
For a number of years, I owned season tickets to the University of Georgia football games. Each year, ticket prices edged up, and without the “suggested” additional donation to the athletic fund, chances of getting seats pretty much disappeared. To the fortunate recipients of tickets, seat location was determined by some formula based on how many years the patron had held season tickets, and the amount of the donations to the athletic fund.
Notre Dame announced this year that 5,000 new season tickets would be available to the public for purchase for the next year. The lowliest seats, in the end zone, require a mandatory donation of $1500.00 per ticket, in addition to the price of the ticket! This amounts to $250.00 per game, not even counting the ticket price! I’m quickly considering a more proactive interest in the NFL, because I can attend five Philadelphia Eagles games for less than the price of one ND game!
Last year I broke tradition and paid $100.00 a ticket for the Penn State-Wisconsin game. We bought the tickets in the parking lot, but lacked the resources to hire a helicopter to deliver us to our seats just below the cloud ceiling. Prior to that, I had never paid more than about three dollars over face value to see a game, and often paid much less. I attended my first Penn State game in 1971, and bought a pair of no-show tickets from the “Will Call” booth, then just a wooden shack sitting in the cow pasture. We sat at the 20-yard line, with a total expenditure of six dollars per ticket. I considered that a sharp increase over what I usually spent to see a high school game, but it seemed well worth the price.
Back then, the horseshoe-shaped stadium held somewhere around 40,000 fans or so, and I watched the Nittany Lions defeat Army on a crisp, bright, Saturday afternoon. The expanded behemoth stadium now packs in 107,000 plus, and features an electronic scoreboard with an instant replay screen that belches out an annoying lion’s growl after every significant play. Rock music gets the fans jumping up and down in unison. Call me old-fashioned, but for me, I’ll just stick with the marching band for inspiration.
College football now reeks of greed. The schools charge outrageous prices for tickets, and most large programs force sizable donations to their athletic funds to ensure a season ticket. They receive millions for games broadcast on TV, and additional millions if invited to a significant bowl game. Single-game tickets are largely non-existent. A cup of soda with more ice than a snow cone, costs between $2.50 and $3.50 to a captive audience prohibited from bringing in their own drinks, even if purchased on campus. Hot dogs and hamburgers cost several dollars, and game programs run about $15.00 on the low end. Expect to pay $70.00 for a school sweatshirt, if you’re stupid enough to buy it in the school’s bookstore.
I used to live for those six days of going to the game each year. Due to a turn of events, I no longer hold season tickets, and living in New Jersey now, I hardly find it worthwhile to attend more than a game or two. With ESPN Gameplan, I watch a multitude of games for the season price of about $130.00, and pay supermarket prices for refreshments. I can transport myself instantaneously from Athens, Georgia, to State College, Pennsylvania, to South Bend, Indiana, and never have to fight traffic, find a parking space, or walk to the stadium. I miss some of the game day atmosphere, but that particular air is becoming way too expensive to breathe.