Your stadium is just too freaking big! Those remaining ?200? tickets might get sold if they are moved back to Earth or if Bob Uecker's family came to town. Really, I don't see any problem. Given the ticket prices that were posted, I wouldn't be bitching unless you get nosebleed seats. Those are very reasonable for the level of play and competition you are seeing.
Before they rebuilt the west side of the stadium I was on row FF (2nd from the top row) in the nosebleed and even then, it wasn't that bad as far as watching the game. You could see all the plays develop and see both sidelines... I didn't mind it too badly, other than not being able to hear the band. The climb up there was another story.. but hey, it was good exercise. :tigerhead
With our home slate this year, there will be no problem filling the seats and keeping it that way most of the game. Last year was a different story.
Being far away may be better than being to close. One year my visiting tickets to our Oregon Civil War game, which is played in the cold of Northwest chill in November, placed me directly behind the band. Even after an adolescence of damaging my ears to way-too-loud rock music, the volume of the band was just painful--I jury-rigged earplugs from available materials--but conversing with my fellows proved impossible.
How about penalizing season ticket holders or students with assigned seats if their seats are empty at kick-off? We could photograph each section within a few seconds at kick-off and count the empties after the season. Maybe the seats could be reassigned to the less-fortunate like myself I think I'm on to something here...
The exact number is up to each school. At LSU, it is somewhere between 10-15,000. Other schools may allocate more or less tickets to the students. In Louisiana, there is a state law that mandates that no more than 12% of all tickets can be linked to any booster organization. Threfore, TAF owns 12% of the lower bowl of Tiger stadium (the law does not apply to the upper decks since TAF owns the upper decks and they are not considered a part of the actual stadium structure). The tradition find that everyone else has to pay is not considered a booster club as the money goes directly to the AD and the money is subject to the state auditor. The SEC rule is that each school must allocate 7,000 tickets for away teams. OOC games can be more or less, but ususlly LSU sticks with 7,000. In years past, LSU has negotiated with other schools to get more tickets in exchange for more tickets on the return visit. For example, a few years ago, LSU got 12,000 tickets for Auburn & in return, we gave Auburn 12,000 when they came to BR the next year.
I think Red is right on, as usual. I'm pretty die-hard and young; so I like getting up early to get the day started, drink hard, then enjoy the game and atmosphere in person no matter where I sit in the stadium. Rain, cold, or oppressive heat , while annoying, doesn't stop me. However, I can understand why a guy would simply not bother bringing his family of four out to the stadium on a cold rainy night to see LSU thump Arizona or Fresno State by 5+ TDs. He could avoid stadium traffic, not risk his family's health in the cold rain, and at WORST put down the cash for Tigervision and watch it on the ever increasing size of the family TV. Not to mention the improvement HDTV brings to the table. Also, there seems to be rather large contingents of LSU fans/alums that live in Houston, Jackson, MS, Atlanta, etc... A forecast of 96 degrees or raging thunderstorms will keep some of those at home. In the end, we do fine though. As someone has said, we ranked 6th in the nation. That's damn good considering how, in my opinion, our OOC scheduling has been horrific or at least needs a major improvement. Look at the VT game for example, look how excited we are, they are, and the NATION is about this game. Games like that do more than just fill the Ath Depart coffers, it gives us more national clout, recognition, all of which help to better the program. I think if we could always have a top 15 maybe top 20 OOC opponent every year along with renewing the rivalry with A&M we would be in great shape. A&M would give us exposure in east Texas and help in recruiting, not mention it's a great away game to attend. And consistently having another top 20 on the schedule would at least keep 1AA away and we could strategically schedule teams in parts of the country where we currently have little recruiting influence. Not sure if anyone notices this but Tenn is much more of a national recruiting school than we are (maybe there's less in state talent). In any case, they do well (usually) even under these circumstances. I have to hypothesize that it's because they schedule home & home's with the likes of Cal. This year they go out west and lets say they dismantle Cal again. They basically plant a flag out west and put the idea in some CA recruit that maybe UT is worth a visit. Whether or not this is correct it still makes for a more exciting schedule than playing some last minute scrub. I hope our OOC scheduling woes are not due to us not wanting to make return trips to other schools. I think if the team is a relatively big name in CFB or is in the Top 30, they deserve a return trip. However, after the VT postponement BS I think we need to be very firm in most cases that the first game in the series is in Tiger Stadium. I do think that some schools are intimidated by our team and we may lose some OOC opponents that way, but we can't do anything about that, can we? I'd like to see more OOC games with the Big12 personally. We're on the western fringe of the SEC and I think playing some Big12 teams would help us recruit just to our west better, instead of playing OOC toward the east where we basically have to compete with nearly every other power in the SEC. Sorry, not sure how I got on to scheduling when we were talking about "filling the stadium". Back to your regularly scheduled topic of discussion now...
