As the chaos associated with the football team’s pursuit of a BCS Championship continues, tickets for the historic Jan. 7 event in the New Orleans Superdome will come at an outrageous premium. As students, alumni and fans scramble to find some way of attending the game, let us remember those among us who already have their tickets, and then some.
While thousands of University students will be left out of the Dome, 16 LSU Board of Supervisors members and their seven lucky choices – 128 people – will be watching the Tigers fight the Ohio State Buckeyes for the BCS National Championship.
Board members are able to buy eight – count ’em, eight – tickets to the title game.
Why? Because they chose to give themselves that amount. With rank comes reward.
Students have a chance to get only 2,000 of the 16,000 tickets the University is distributing via the LSU Priority Point System. Every person getting the tickets from the University pays $175.
Thousands of diehard fans attended nearly every game this season, and many of them will fall short of being picked for tickets. Board members haven’t had to attend a single game, yet they are still offered the opportunity to buy more than their fair share of tickets.
They aren’t the only ones who get tickets quite easily. State legislators can also purchase up to two tickets.
At the same time, the Tiger football players, who got us to the National Championship game to begin with, are only allocated six tickets each.
Additionally, football players are restricted from scalping their tickets by rules set by the NCAA and a provision in state law prohibiting students from ticket scalping.
Board members, with the exception of Cassie Alsfeld who is a student, have no legal restrictions keeping them from scalping.
The people most deserving of tickets are the ones who brought us there – the team. And at the end of the Florida game, coach Les Miles and the Tigers thanked the students for their support.
So who do you think the Tigers want in the stands supporting them next month? Surely not the state legislators, or the Board members and their seven guests, but the thousands of fans who come out to support them every Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.
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