The most enduring image of . “The LSU Ticket Office uses two categories of points, lifetime and philanthropic, to allocate tickets.” In other words: If you’re not sure where you are on the ranking list, you probably ought to throw a few more bucks on the pile just to be sure.
This is not to pick on LSU; the Tigers aren’t alone in this sort of operation. Virtually every major college football-oriented university operates some variant of this scheme: “Donate” money for the right to request football tickets. “Donate” more money to get the opportunity to buy more tickets. “Donate” even more money to get the right to purchase parking. And keep on “donating” money, because if you don’t, someone else who does will jump you in the queue line. And you don’t want that to happen, do you?
Confused? Don’t worry. Just keep that wallet open, because you want to help “provide those resources” that are “vital to the success of the current student-athletes,” don’t you?
Universities dress up these pay-to-watch-’em-play schemes with a combination of evocative names and good old-fashioned fundraising shaming. At Georgia, the route to purchasing better tickets is called the Hartman Fund. At Ohio State, the Buckeye Club. Clemson has IPTAY. Alabama? Tide Pride. And on and on. Whatever the name, the nuances may differ, but the end result is the same: weaponizing and monetizing your nostalgia and your love of the ol’ alma mater.
None of this is new, of course; schools have been doing this sort of undisguised arm-twisting for decades. But with the funding mechanisms already in place, and with fans softened up to expect to pay fees on top of fees, wringing ever more money out of the alumni base is simply a matter of adjusting a couple sliders upward and seeing who’s willing to keep paying.
All of these costs add up, and not just in the sense of “parking + concessions + souvenirs,” either. There’s a psychic cost to all this, too. Seeing your seats moved to a different part of the stadium than the one where you used to sit with your parents and grandparents … watching as ever-larger chunks of the stadium get turned into VIP lounges and high-dollar donor hangouts … seeing tailgates close to the stadium get homogenized into a sea of identical white reserved-and-paid-in-advance tents, while the quirky ones get banished to the far edge of campus … it all chips away at the foundations of fandom.
Now factor in the way that both coaches and players can jump ship without penalty, leaving your beloved alma mater in the lurch even after you’ve paid all those thousands, and, well … it’s not hard to see how universities will start shedding fans over all these seismic changes.
There’s nothing quite like a college football Saturday afternoon — the leaves changing, the tailgates sizzling, the marching band playing as you walk through the campus and the memories of your old school. Thing is, your old school knows how much that means to you, and they’re going to keep on charging you for the experience. It’s one more annual tuition bill from your university, and this time there’s no graduation to bring it to a close.
