Attempts to reduce scalping and limit team distractions caused more than 1,000 University students some game-day discomfort Jan. 7 while picking up their BCS National Championship tickets at the Louisiana Superdome.
Seat locations were distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis, prompting many students to arrive before 7 a.m. although ticket distribution was not slated to begin until noon.
Multiple students said no Superdome or LSU officials were on site at 7 a.m. to help form lines or monitor the situation, which soon turned into a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd for nearly five hours.
“It was chaos,” said history senior Anna Martin, who arrived at 6 a.m. “It wasn’t organized. With about a thousand kids, we kind of felt like cattle in a herd. You couldn’t sit down, and if you left to go to the bathroom, you lost your place in line.”
Martin, who serves as president of the Tiger Athletic Foundation Collegiate Club, said the situation worsened when the New Orleans Police Department drove cars through the line to clear a path around the Superdome.
“Everyone had to go either forward or backward, and of course everyone was pushing to get on the side closest to the ticket counter,” said Martin, who received tickets three rows from the field. “We ended up not even being in a line, and everyone was just squished.”
LSU ticket manager Brian Broussard said the game-day pickup has two key advantages: reducing the time period for scalping and limiting team distractions at LSU’s official hotel, which would otherwise serve as the location for students to pick up tickets.
Broussard said the University implemented the same game-day system for the 2003 BCS National Championship with “no issues.”
“We let the Superdome know that there would be a lot of fans out there, but apparently we overestimated the ability of the students to form an orderly line,” Broussard said. “The Superdome ended up putting security out there, but it was after the fact.”
With non-national championship bowl games, such as the 2007 Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame, the University usually uses a two or three day pick-up system headquartered at the official LSU team hotel.
Student Government Director of Athletics Dixon McMakin said Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel representatives were displeased in 2007 before the Sugar Bowl when many students camped out on hotel premises.
McMakin said the New Orleans Marriott, which served as LSU’s official team hotel for the National Championship game, was even less fan-friendly because of the layout.
General studies senior Andree Miller arrived at about 9 a.m. at the Superdome and saw a line that stretched around “more than half the Superdome.”
Since she arrived more than two hours later than many students, Miller said she avoided the shoulder-to-shoulder discomfort near the front of the line.
“I’m so happy that we won, but it was really just a big inconvenience to have to wait that long on game day,” said Miller, who received tickets in the terrace level. “There’s probably no ideal way which would make everyone happy, but why can’t we just pick them up earlier at the LSU Athletic Department?”
Ohio State ticket director Bill Jones said Ohio State students picked up their tickets from Dec. 26 to Jan. 4 in Columbus, Ohio.
“We never force our students to pick them up on game day,” Jones said. “You’re never going to win the battle against scalping. You just hope that your students want to go to the game rather than make a profit.”
Broussard said the LSU Athletic Department will “re-evaluate” the logistics of distributing tickets on game day.
“What happened is certainly not what we wanted to happen,” Broussard said. “We’ll have to stress upon the Superdome and the New Orleans Police Department to set up barricades the whole way through.”
—-Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]