With football season right around the corner, the University of Tennessee has made a second change in as many years to the system of selling and distributing tickets to its students. They just released the information on it today, and I just wanted to share some quick thoughts on the changes, because it’s fairly different from last year’s system.

The highlights and lowlights of the new system and a brief history of my own student tickets experiences after the jump.

I’m a senior. My first two years I shamefully admit to being in the much-disdained Orange Nation. No, I never wore the shirts and the people around me most of the time angered me (and my friends) with their obvious lack of caring about the game. It made sense – you pay a little extra, but you pretty much get guaranteed quality seats.

Until you start sitting betweens rows 8 and 10 in Section F – the corner where you can’t really see anything. This might be taking it for granted, but if I’m not gonna be close enough to be on the first three rows, then I would like to be higher, so I could see the actual game. I then found out that the group leaders took care of “people that helped them” and had them on a separate “front-row” lists at the ticket office.

Fortunately, when the University went to last year’s system of season tickets and charging us for seats, they did away with the group, and now I have no clue if it even exists anymore. Amidst all the fuss over the charging of tickets, I was more amused than anything. People in Facebook groups threatened boycotting the openere against UAB and a rally to wear black at the Orange and White Game (that never actually happened), which was held shortly after the announcement.

Well, the new “cost” of tickets – $15 or one fewer 12-pack of Natty Light – and the poor product on the field attributed to really pitiful student attendance, which I lamented on here after the UAB game. The full student section was full for maybe the Florida game, and I don’t even know if it was full for the Alabama debacle.

As for me, I had better luck with tickets last year than either of my first two years: the highest I sat was row 35 for the Florida game, and I was on the front row for both Northern Illinois and Alabama. In three years, I’ve never sat in the upper deck of the student section or outside any section other than D, E or F. Pretty good luck, eh?

So when I heard last week while on vacation of the change in the system, I feared the worse. My luck has to run out at some point? But I read about it today, and here’s my thoughts:

THE GOOD:

• UT has now gone to a points or “Loyalty” system, in effect increasing student’s chances of getting good seats if they regularly attend games. I know some other schools in the SEC have something similar to this, where the more sporting events a student attends across all sports, the more points you accumulate and the better chances for winning lottery tickets to away games, bowls or SEC Championship Games. Hence, the more hardcore fans get rewarded with better seats.
• Seniority, baby. For the first year, you have priority based on your credit hours. Which obviously helps me, as I’m over 100 hours and just a semester and six hours from being an alum. So they took care of me.
• No more waiting in lines at the University Center. Not too long ago, UT was first-come, first-serve on football tickets. To eliminate the camping out and the suffering academics took as a result, they made it random, so it didn’t matter when you got there – all tickets were random. Last year, if you bought tickets you still had to go pick them up. This system is all online. I never really minded waiting, but sometimes it got complicated when everyone you’re wanting to sit with lives somewhere different off-campus than you, coordinating the collection of IDs got a little tricky.

THE BAD:

• The Group Policy. I had to read it a couple of times for it to make sense, but it still seems more complicated than it needs to be. The principle is still the same – 12 people max, have to apply at once. Yet, simply put you just have to find a “leader” and coordinate with ID numbers and all that. Either way, it seems like it could very easily cause problems.
• What counts as “good” or the “best” seats? Obviously if you’re sitting on row 40, you have a better view of the actual game than if you’re on row 1. So I just have to wonder how exactly they define those terms. I would guess “best” means closest…
• It’s so much more complex than it has been, and that could easily be a turn-away for the impatient and flaky students we very clearly have at this University. Perhaps the explanation was just really poor, or maybe the system is just meant to be that way. Only time will tell about the effectiveness.

So, at this point I have no idea if I should say I like or not. The only way to find that out is to obviously go through the process a couple of times. Fortunately for me, I’ll only have to deal with 8 times, and then I’m done with it – and on to the big-boy alumni/donor tickets system…

– … to me.

About the Author:  I'm from Memphis but I'm now entering my third year at the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville. I am majoring in Journalism/Electronic Media and hope to go into sports broadcasting/writing/something like that. I'm a huge Vol fan and have been going to games for as long as I can remember. I started my on blog called "The View From The Hill" but moved here to Gate 21 for bigger and better things. In addition to my passion for Tennessee football and basketball, I enjoy watching the NFL and the NBA as well. Basically, sports are a big part of my life. >> Read more from this author

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