Where are all the students? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Where are all the students?

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The problem is the ticket process. Back in the day about 10 years ago, until a bunch of butt hurt students complained, you camped out for about 24 hours and waited in line to buy tickets for UConn season tickets. Lone and behold students complained it wasn't fair and the current generations attitude of I deserve tickets cause Im a student took over. So instead of the hardcore passionate fans getting the student tickets every student enters into a lottery system based on class standing and the tickets are distributed that way. So basically every guy tells all their friends and every female they know to enter the lottery and if those people get tickets through the lottery they will buy those tickets from them and then have a surplus/stack of tickets that they either use to scalp or go to the games they want. The camping stopped cause students complained it wasn't fair and they couldn't afford to camp out for 24 hours and miss 1 days worth of classes.

Bring back the camping out and the true hadcore fans who bleed blue will have the tickets and fill the stadium. I never missed a game at XL when I was a student. All these excuses are bogus. I knew plenty of people on campus who had a car and tickets and we would pregame and carpool. We also came from the era of 50 cent pitchers, nickel night and good old penny night at civic pub. We still would miss those things to go to UConn games in Hartford. Pound beers and shots before and then take a few with you for the ride and pound a few more in the garage. Then you only need a couple beers during the game. We always had a girl be our DD.

Just excuses from the students who don't show up to Hartford. They are the same that complain about there being no parking on campus when there are weekday night games on campus.
 
I support more and better student seats (and less corporate, non-fans) but when you see empty student sections (which I noticed a couple of times this year) it is confusing.
As far as the difficulty for students to get to the XL, I'm missing something. Does the buss cost a lot? Is it inconvenient?
I'm 60 and my drive is much longer than the students. Parking is outrageously expensive. A 30 minute bus ride would seem like a deal to me.
Not asking you to get off my lawn but I don't understand.
 
I never had to camp out for tickets because I was in the pep band. More kids should try that.
 
zls44 said:
All those who camped out with me through a hurricane in October 2005 outside Gampel to get season tickets shall be my brothers forever.
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Best day ever!!!
 
Nothing will ever replace season ticket campout. Those were some of the most fun days I ever had as a UConn student. And like everything else fun, it was done away with.
 
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zls44 said:
All those who camped out with me through a hurricane in October 2005 outside Gampel to get season tickets shall be my brothers forever.
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yup, caught a cold, was my freshman year, maybe even my first month or two and never experienced school tradition or anything like that. was an awesome time... miserable.. but awesome, made the tickets worth it. And you can always take a bus from campus and pregame in hartford.
 
methodology said:
The problem is the ticket process. Back in the day about 10 years ago, until a bunch of butt hurt students complained, you camped out for about 24 hours and waited in line to buy tickets for UConn season tickets. Lone and behold students complained it wasn't fair and the current generations attitude of I deserve tickets cause Im a student took over. So instead of the hardcore passionate fans getting the student tickets every student enters into a lottery system based on class standing and the tickets are distributed that way. So basically every guy tells all their friends and every female they know to enter the lottery and if those people get tickets through the lottery they will buy those tickets from them and then have a surplus/stack of tickets that they either use to scalp or go to the games they want. The camping stopped cause students complained it wasn't fair and they couldn't afford to camp out for 24 hours and miss 1 days worth of classes.

Bring back the camping out and the true hadcore fans who bleed blue will have the tickets and fill the stadium. I never missed a game at XL when I was a student. All these excuses are bogus. I knew plenty of people on campus who had a car and tickets and we would pregame and carpool. We also came from the era of 50 cent pitchers, nickel night and good old penny night at civic pub. We still would miss those things to go to UConn games in Hartford. Pound beers and shots before and then take a few with you for the ride and pound a few more in the garage. Then you only need a couple beers during the game. We always had a girl be our DD.

Just excuses from the students who don't show up to Hartford. They are the same that complain about there being no parking on campus when there are weekday night games on campus.
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Bingo.

For the casual student fan, I'm sure beer + friends + chicks > driving to hartford. But I'll be damned if I ever missed a game after camping out for those tickets. And screw the bus, we always managed to find free parking (hell, I can still find it to this day. Market St. garage, etc.)

And any 18-22 year old who whines about getting back to campus at 10:00 hasn't been doing their homework.
 
David 76 said:
I support more and better student seats (and less corporate, non-fans) but when you see empty student sections (which I noticed a couple of times this year) it is confusing.
As far as the difficulty for students to get to the XL, I'm missing something. Does the buss cost a lot? Is it inconvenient?
I'm 60 and my drive is much longer than the students. Parking is outrageously expensive. A 30 minute bus ride would seem like a deal to me.
Not asking you to get off my lawn but I don't understand.
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When I was a grad student I went to pretty much every on campus athletic event I was able to attend, regardless of the sport. I don't remember many off campus events, but I doubt I would have gotten on a bus unless it was a big game.
 
Current student here (Soph). I was at the game last night and was actually pleasantly surprised by the student turnout. This was a weeknight game in Hartford. Against Tulsa. I get that they're the first place team in the conference, but to the casual fan, they don't know the record, they just see some bumble duck school from Oklahoma. It's not a name they recognize, like Cuse or Nova, or even Cincy. The XL center was full to the brim for the Cincy game. I think the name of the opponent plays a pretty big role.
 
Yeah the seats where people wanna put students are like tier5 legacy season ticket holders and big big bucks. They are not giving up the per game gain on the prices and piss off big time donors.
 
David 76 said:
Big social night at 7:00 pm? Come on. Weak
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Yeah Thursday night was one of the bigger nights out, especially for us in the business school. Fall semester senior year I'd get out of business law at 6:45, and would immediately go to Huskies for nickel night. Once nickel night was wrapping up, I'd go across the street to Thirsty's for 50 cent pitchers. Most Friday mornings I would wake up on someone's couch in Celeron or Hunting Lodge
 
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1999.2004.2011 said:
Yeah Thursday night was one of the bigger nights out, especially for us in the business school. Fall semester senior year I'd get out of business law at 6:45, and would immediately go to Huskies for nickel night. Once nickel night was wrapping up, I'd go across the street to Thirsty's for 50 cent pitchers. Most Friday mornings I would wake up on someone's couch in Celeron or Hunting Lodge
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And if you're lucky you'll wake up in someones bed in Celeron or Hunting Lodge ;)
 
Drew said:
Nickel starts at 7 and people would rather spend $20 to watch it on campus in a bar with their friends than money on transportation/tickets/food/drinks in hartford. pretty simple really. Want a rowdy environment? Put this game in Gampel with a 9pm tip off post nickel. Someone might die.
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You may get your wish when we play Memphis at 9 pm on a Thursday at Gampel in a couple weeks.
 
To the point @methodology made earlier in the thread, it's perfectly understandable that the casual fan wouldn't want to go to a game in Hartford. But UConn has what, 25,000 students? A lot of those 25,000 probably applied to UConn in part because of their athletic programs, and basketball is obviously the marquee attraction at this school. There should be no problem filling to capacity, even if it's a semi-inconvenient bus ride away. The problem is that the tickets are in the hands of the wrong people, and that's been a problem for years now. The people who get tickets should be the ones that would die for UConn basketball, not some shmuck who wants to profit by selling them for over face value (these are the worst types of people).

And I get that basketball is way behind alcohol in the pecking order for college students, but God, you sound so lame when you can't go to a basketball game because you can't wait until 9:00 to get drunk.
 
Wait wait wait.... I am not from Connecticut, the XL games are not free for students?? Is the bus ride free? Can you sneak booze on to the bus at least?
 
W Coast UCONN said:
Wait wait wait.... I am not from Connecticut, the XL games are not free for students?? Is the bus ride free? Can you sneak booze on to the bus at least?
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No booze allowed, bus ticket is $4, game tickets are $5.
 
Brochacho said:
No booze allowed, bus ticket is $4, game tickets are $5.
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That price is warding students away? You couldn't sneak booze onto the bus? This confuses me, a 30 minute pregame for a 5 dollar game sounds wonderful...
 
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That's the thing I don't get about the bus. You can't get booze on it? Do the students really lack that ability.

Granted at gampel and rentschler
we need to be more subtle - but
at Memorial we had an open bar in the bleachers.

Females have bras - does the TSA handle bus security?

I would pay $500 a year to make a short walk and have bus transportation to XL for games.

Maybe they are bussing in the wrong demographic.
 
whaler11 said:
That's the thing I don't get about the bus. You can't get booze on it? Do the students really lack that ability.
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That's what I am scratching my head about, I feel like the booze driven mind of a student could certainly figure it out.

Where there's a thirst there's a way.
 
You didn't even have to camp out to get season tickets. You just had to show up the day they went on sale. At least that was my experience from 2000-2004 so complaining that it isn't fair is pretty lame, they are just lazy.
 
W Coast UCONN said:
That's what I am scratching my head about, I feel like the booze driven mind of a student could certainly figure it out.

Where there's a thirst there's a way.
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I know I'm an outlier, but give me a bus ride and give me the last row and I can't be happier.
 
A lot of Alumni or other fans got slammed for not getting out to games or not wanting to drive the extra miles to Storrs.
Sounds like a double standard for students. Remember: Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life!
 
David 76 said:
I support more and better student seats (and less corporate, non-fans) but when you see empty student sections (which I noticed a couple of times this year) it is confusing.
As far as the difficulty for students to get to the XL, I'm missing something. Does the buss cost a lot? Is it inconvenient?
I'm 60 and my drive is much longer than the students. Parking is outrageously expensive. A 30 minute bus ride would seem like a deal to me.
Not asking you to get off my lawn but I don't understand.
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If you're a student and a fan of the teams, you'll figure out a way to get to the games. If you're a student and only a casual fan, you won't. I'm sure there are plenty of UCONN students who never attend a game during their entire four years in Storrs.

If you're a student who whines about how tough it is to go to the games in Hartford, then you're probably a casual fan. Due to no flights available in or out of Tampa, we had to fly to Jacksonville, FL, rent a car and drive to Tampa/St. Petersburg for the 1999 Final Four. We had our return flight from Orlando very early the morning after the title game on Mon night. You find a way to do it if you're a fan.
 
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SubbaBub said:
It's Tulsa.
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That is part of the problem - conference realignment. Students want to see good basketball games and, even more so, see games in which their school beats the schools that their friends go to. How many UConn students have HS friends who went to Tulsa, Houston, SMU, etc. College sports were built on rivalries and that is where the money came from. Money cannot make rivalries nor can it make students want to go to games.
 
champs99and04 said:
To the point @methodology made earlier in the thread, it's perfectly understandable that the casual fan wouldn't want to go to a game in Hartford. But UConn has what, 25,000 students? A lot of those 25,000 probably applied to UConn in part because of their athletic programs, and basketball is obviously the marquee attraction at this school. There should be no problem filling to capacity, even if it's a semi-inconvenient bus ride away. The problem is that the tickets are in the hands of the wrong people, and that's been a problem for years now. The people who get tickets should be the ones that would die for UConn basketball, not some shmuck who wants to profit by selling them for over face value (these are the worst types of people).

And I get that basketball is way behind alcohol in the pecking order for college students, but God, you sound so lame when you can't go to a basketball game because you can't wait until 9:00 to get drunk.
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I never won the lottery in my 4 years, but I bought Hartford student tickets for face value on the buy or sell tickets facebook group every year, and then again the year after I graduated since my ID still worked. The last year the guy I bought them from thanked me for buying them because he thought he wasn't going to be able to get rid of them.

There's just not a lot of students willing to go to Hartford except for the really big games. It's been this way for awhile, there's been empty seats in the student section for much better opponents than Tulsa in the past.
 
The lottery system is a joke. I even emailed Jeff Hathaway when I was there to try to discuss how ridiculous it was to no avail. Absolute joke the way kids buy tickets to sell them. The best system is one where students are rewarding for attending the games of other UConn programs/activities. They all have ID cards and every ID should be scanned at every event-be it hockey, football, womens basketball, tennis, baseball, soccer, etc-and mens basketball tickets should be offered in the order of games attended with any remaining tickets going into a lottery.

The other problem is that I know when I was there, the USF/UCF/Seton Hall type games were ones I would only go to if I had nothing else to do, whereas the early non-con games were great for studying the team and most conference and big non-con games we were finding a way to no matter what (I always felt the "i have a test" excuse was a joke. You know well in advance when both games and tests are. If you failed to prepare its your fault and those 2 hours of studying the night before aren't going to help a whole lot. Freshman year I did not understand this, once i figured out how easy tests were if you studied a few days in advance I never made that mistake again). Now that i have gotten way off track-over half our schedule is made up of those USF/UCF/Tulane/ECU type games so I can understand some waning interest, but then again, you only get 18 home games a year-I can understand not being incredibly loud, but there is no reason for so many empty seats.

The biggest issue in the end is, turn on a B10/SEC/ACC/B12 game and you immediately know that your watching major CBB. The arenas are painted in the team colors and it looks and feels big time. For UConn games, the sideline that is on TV for all 40 minutes is filled with middle aged and elderly fans dressed in every color of the rainbow which makes it look like a local hs game. There is certainly much more to getting a bid than this, but it would be nice to turn a game on and see a sea of blue and white everywhere you look, then again, branding/PR at UConn has been, is and will continue to be, a joke. Hell, for the FF in 2011, UNC/MSU shipped their students to the game and paid for their hotel rooms. UConn offered tickets, but we were completely on our own and ended up buying a used mini-van for $500 and driving 6 of us cross country Friday night directly to Ford Field, drinking a 30 rack and a bottle of booze on line waiting to get in the game and then driving home les than 24 hours later. Most fun trip of my life even with the loss.
 
I obviously can't speak for every school, but when Marist made the Sweet Sixteen in women's basketball, the school had a student package that included tickets, hotels, flights and all ground transportation for something like
$ 229.

I know other schools subsidize students in similar fashions

BC charges something like $ 175 per year for access to football, basketball and hockey games

I have to believe our students pay more than just about any other student body, and they're given the worst seats of any student body. Always in the endzone, never on the sidelines
 
kemba said:
I never won the lottery in my 4 years, but I bought Hartford student tickets for face value on the buy or sell tickets facebook group every year, and then again the year after I graduated since my ID still worked. The last year the guy I bought them from thanked me for buying them because he thought he wasn't going to be able to get rid of them.

There's just not a lot of students willing to go to Hartford except for the really big games. It's been this way for awhile, there's been empty seats in the student section for much better opponents than Tulsa in the past.
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There was a thread a while ago with people complaining the bar area took up student seats and that the second level was no longer students at the XL. There were NEVER students in the second level sans Nova/Cuse/Georgetown type games.
 
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