An unanticipated urge to study, optional finals, unexpected travel plans, the sudden need for cash.
All were reasons – some perhaps more valid than others – for students to sell their tickets to this Saturday’s Oregon-Oregon State game on Facebook’s online marketplace.
The impromptu sellers had waited in line to get their tickets when the Ducks were No. 9 in the nation after losing to Arizona.
University freshman Amanda Asa is taking offers for her ticket because she needs to study that day.
Asa and a group of her friends slept outside of Autzen Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 10, enduring rain and cold that night, to get tickets. One of the group’s tents didn’t have a rain fly, which made for a damp, but fun, campout.
By Sunday afternoon, she had her hands on a ticket.
The Ducks, once a team with unprecedented aspirations, were 8-2, ranked ninth in both AP and BCS polls. What they are now is a team decimated by injuries, a mere shell of its former self.
Asa said she knew how sweet the game against Oregon State could have been, a breeze of a victory to cap off an astounding one-loss season.
That was before Oregon’s BCS title-game hopes crashed down three days earlier in Tucson, Ariz., where vaunted Heisman hopeful Dennis Dixon crumpled to the turf with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament.
Fortunately for Asa, all was not lost. She also knew she could easily sell her ticket because her student identification number wasn’t on it.
So now, she’s hoping she’ll have a few extra bucks and, consequently, a few more hours to study for a final exam in her art history class.
“I might have gone, but ultimately I am selling it because I need to study,” Asa said. “But if we didn’t lose Dixon and the team was as good as it was, it would have been harder to make that decision.”
The prized possessions that many students camped out for lost some of their value after Dixon got injured, resulting in an influx of tickets on Facebook’s Marketplace and Eugene Craigslist. Sellers are asking for as little as $25 and as much as $150. Most add that they’ll take a best offer.
Their reasons for selling vary between apathy to sheer bitterness.
“I’ve got two tickets to the Civil War game this weekend, and suddenly I can’t make it,” one seller wrote.
Some are more optimistic – all part of a convincing sales pitch.
“We might not be ranked that high anymore but the Civil War is still the Civil War!!!” one seller wrote.
Asa said she’s received an immediate offer of $30 for hers as soon as she posted it. Someone else said they’d pay $15, which she said she ignored. Her plan now is to hold her ticket until a day or two before kickoff, when she believes people may be more desperate for it.
On Saturday, Asa’s roommate from Corvallis will be at the game and she’ll be in her dorm room studying.
But Asa insists that the Ducks’ record had little to do with her decision though.
“I would have been there to support the team no matter what,” Asa said. “It was just an inconvenient time before finals and I am in the honors college and an architecture major.”
Though one seller described his ticket as in “limited supply,” at least 115 tickets were available on Facebook Monday evening. A search on Eugene Craiglist yielded more than 169 “Civil War ticket” posts.
The eager sellers are matched by a loyal batch of die-hard fans who never entertained the thought of selling their tickets.
Those fans include University freshman H.J. Childs, who wears face paint and who hasn’t missed a home game this year.
“I feel if I skipped out on this one it wouldn’t have been worth camping out for the ticket,” he said.
Childs said fans of the rivalry are undoubtedly going to the game. But at his dormitory – Barnhart – feelings about Oregon football, and student ticket sales, are split. He estimated that about 50 percent of Barnhart’s residents would sell their tickets.
Though the other half wouldn’t, he said most everyone is sick to their stomachs about the Ducks’ turbulent conclusion to a what-could-have-been season.
“We are a sports dorm, so people were pretty mad and irritable,” Childs said. “People are really into sports and they are really mad about the Arizona and UCLA loss and disappointed.”
The home team in Civil War games has won every year since 1996. Some fans are showing little credence to that streak though, citing the yearlong circumstances that make Oregon appear vulnerable to breaking the streak.
Aside from kicker Matt Evensen’s contributions against Arizona, the Ducks were shut down offensively after Dixon’s injury. Oregon hasn’t put points on the scoreboard since Andre Crenshaw ran in a two-yard touchdown with 7:53 remaining on Nov. 15 in Tucson, Ariz.
Meanwhile, the Beavers have won five of their last six games. Oregon State’s defense may very likely take Oregon’s star running backs out of the game. The Beavers lead the nation in defending the run, allowing only 63.0 yards per game.
The Ducks’ bandwagon is emptying fast, but Childs said Autzen Stadium won’t be empty come Saturday.
“If you are a football fan and you are pretty devote to the Ducks, you’ll go,” Childs said. “Not going just because you don’t think they are going to win, I think it’s a lame act.”
University senior Zach Hutsell was asking for $40 – or best offer.
“All of a sudden I find myself not wanting to go. Instead I’ll spend my Saturday in quiet contemplation of the better days of life,” Hutsell wrote in an e-mail.
Both sellers and holders agreed that the Ducks’ bumpy season has been frustrating. Hutsell may have summed up all the Ducks’ misfortunes best – “pure exasperation.”
“The type brought on by a rapid succession of tremendous highs and bottomless lows,” he said.
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Losses, finals make Civil War a not-so-hot ticket
Daily Emerald
November 29, 2007
Daniel Bachuber
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