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Message: [QUOTE="UConnNick, post: 1354450, member: 1526"] The UCONN Alumni Association has absolutely nothing to do with the ticket packaging and travel arrangements for major athletic events, or ANY athletic events UCONN is involved in. That's all done by the Athletic Dept. Unfortunately, many big time athletic schools use Final Fours and other big athletic events as a giant money grab. They kite the cost of these packages and force you to buy the whole package, which is ridiculously overpriced, for the stature of being able to stay at the team hotel, or at least team fan hotel, or a few hotels that are included in the package. You can thank former AD Jeff Hathaway for the Fiesta Bowl fiasco. They held onto the concept of selling the packages through World Travel in New Haven and some think it was deliberate on his part because he already knew he was on his way out the door. UCONN fans who couldn't afford to buy the package deals ended up making their own travel and hotel arrangements, and buying game tickets on the open market. We therefore got absolutely no credit for having maybe 12,000 to 15,000 fans at the game because the university reportedly returned a bunch of unsold tickets, which UCONN had to pay for anyway. BTW, they are allowed under whatever contract they have with World Travel to de-bundle those ridiculous packages, all the way down to selling the tickets only. They did that for the men's FF in Dallas last year and offered tickets to members of the UCAA, but not until they'd sold all the packages they could. I once had to negotiate with them for 20 min. on the phone for the FF in St. Pete because I didn't need round-trip airfare from BDL to Tampa, nor ground transportation there. It was like pulling teeth to get them to de-bundle the bundle. They want you paying top dollar for the whole mess. It's a lousy system, no question, but a lot of schools do it the exact same way. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach