I've seen all this talk about how repelling the rule will cause Tiger Stadium to be overrun by rich snobs. That is far from the truth. No Tiger fans should be shut out. They may get moved around in the stadium but thats it. Look at it this way, there are people now who have seats in the upper decks or endzones who want to get seats in the gold chairbacks. They will be willing to pay alot more money to get them but since there are none open it cannot happen. As for the people already in the chairbacks, if they want to keep their seats they will have to pay the surcharge to keep them. It does not matter that they have had them since 1960. It is 2003 not 1960. If they cannot pay the money all is not lost. These people will not be shutout. They could probably afford seats elewhere in Tiger Stadium like the endzones. This ticket surcharge will not shut people out of getting tickets. In essence it will shuffle around people in Tiger Stadium. People in the lower bowl may have to move to the upper deck and visa versa. It might be nice to see a batch of younger bloods sitting in the chairbacks instead of the older fans. No offence to any person in the chairbacks right now, but those are the people who usually leave the game first in a blowout. It would be nice to see those seats filled for the entire game. Also there will be no $2,000 surcharges per seat. In ideas I've seen, the lower chairback would have a $600 surcharge between the 30's and $550 elsewhere. Most seats like the endzone would have only a $50 dollar surcharge and some would not carry one. Really the only seats with a huge charge would be the club seats and suites and they already carry this surcharge. This is a far cry from the $2000 people were griping about. At least learn the facts before you grip and complain.
The latest P&G magazine outlined a sample plan. The rates were very reasonable. Whenever it comes time for me to have to pruchase tickets as a non-student I would be able to deal with the $50 fee for the endzone. Hoepfully within 10 to 15 years I will be able to afford tickets on the sidelines in the lower bowl, I would love to be able to have 2 or 3 tickets there since my father will be retiring in about 10 years or so. He is a die hard Tiger fan that doesn't make it to enough games.
I have no problem with it. It's long overdue. I'm sorry, but $36 a game, $10 in concessions and "I've been a loyal Tiger fan and season ticket holder and I've been to every game since the dawn of time!!!" just isn't going to cut it anymore. Look at what Houston is doing. They're athletic program is on the brink of collapse because this mentality has been allowed to fester for too long. Now, they're taking action. UH season ticket holders who give nothing more to the university than the cost of the tickets now risk losing their seats and premium parking spaces. When are the "Old Guard" Tiger fans finally going to wake up and realize that in order to compete on a national level year in and year out, this program needs MONEY and lots of it! The $300 you and the 60,000 other season ticket holders pay for a season ticket does not even BEGIN to pay for what is needed to bring anther national championship trophy to Baton Rouge. Do you bleed purple and gold? Do you love the Tigers? Do you want to see LSU win another national championship in our lifetime? Now is the time to put up or shut up. We need this money NOW! TAF is not asking for much? Can you only give $100 extra a year? SKIP WILL TAKE IT! Nobody (save for the SUPER rich who inhabit the club seats and Tiger Den luxury boxes) is going to be asked to put down $2,000 for season tickets. But you have to give something! After I leave school, I want to come back to LSU for many games, and if I live anywhere within 300 miles of Baton Rouge and can afford it, I'm going to look into purchasing season tickets. I would like to know that when I do so, my contribution will get me something good and that I won't be forced to watch from the upper deck while some old coot who inherited his tickets from his grandfather and doesn't give jack to this school other than the face-value ticket price gets seats on the 50 yard line. This has to be a total support effort by the loyal fan base, and too many people aren't pulling their weight. Will this alienate a large portion of our loyal fan base? I don't think so. Only those who are too stubborn and conceited to see the reality of things, and I don't care for them anyway. They can watch on TV. Thousands more who are willing to generously open their checkbooks and support this school will line up to replace them. It will be their loss.
Go to the Tiger Rag web site. It has good info concerning the surcharges. The prices are alittle diffrent than that of the ones in the Purple and Gold but not by much. There are a couple of plans out there right now and this is one.Surcharge Information
rather than reproduce my thoughts on the subject i refer you to ?'s I have relative to TAF from some other threads on the board. As i indicate I will accept it but I have some ?'s that I think are important from a fans perspective. TAF ?'s And this from another post is some detail on some of the items in the above:
