By: Erik Gundersen
The elation was something that I had never felt before. Hugging complete strangers. Embracing friends that had also made the trip North to Corvallis to watch the Oregon Ducks in the biggest game of our school’s history
As LaMichael James waltzed into the end-zone to give the Oregon Ducks a 37-13 lead, we finally knew it: our school had just sealed a trip to its first ever BCS National Championship appearance and who would have thought we would be students during this moment? Myself, other students and fans rushed down to the field to bask in the victory. However, I never though that enjoying one of, if not the greatest moment in Oregon sports would cost us a trip to as Cliff Harris calls it, “The Natty.”
After exiting Reser Stadium feeling the emotional reward of waking up at 5:30 am to represent the Ducks at ESPN’s College Gameday and inside Reser Stadium, I hopped into my friend’s car en route back to Eugene to celebrate the momentous occasion.
As me and my friends were traveling back down to Eugene from Corvallis we started talking to each other about the possible opportunity to go to the BCS National Championship game in Glendale, AZ. We wondered, is there going to be an e-mail sent out soon? I said, “probably, I bet they will distribute the tickets just like they did last year for the Rose Bowl.”
How wrong I was.
After getting home, I came to my computer to check my e-mail and hopefully find out how the National Championship tickets were going to be distributed. But to my surprise, I saw that they were already being sold through the travel agency, Azumano. Then I thought to myself, “Isn’t this the 21st century, who the hell uses travel agencies?”
After clicking on the link in the e-mail, I saw that UO Student Affairs had given all 1,000 of the student tickets to Azumano to then sell to UO students, or anyone that knew a current UO student’s I.D. number. I saw that all of the “deals,” except one, sold through Azumano, included a flight, hotel reservations (at four star hotels), or both in addition to one ticket to the National Championship game.
I was not interested in this crap. I had already anticipated a Duck victory and was proactive in making travel arrangements before we had won the game. I had done this and it cost me a fraction of what Azumano was going to charge me if I bought one of their so-called student deals.
Although, we are expected to be adults in College, travel plans were to be forced on us as if we were still 8 year-olds going on a family vacation. The package that included only a ticket to the game was $450, but by the time I got home, it was sold out. Our counter-parts at Auburn who are in a lottery, at a smaller school are only paying $300 for a ticket, should they be lucky enough to get one. At Auburn, all of the students that supported their Football team by going to all home games, the whole season have an equal shot at going to their University’s first National Championship appearance.
The distribution of the tickets was done without warning. Those of us who made the trip to Corvallis to cheer on our team were completely hung out to dry. Those who were watching the game at home were probably not worrying about who was going to e-mail them. They wanted to celebrate. After last year’s Rose Bowl experience, why wouldn’t you think that they would distribute tickets in the same fashion? You would have thought that the UO Athletic Department would do things the way that they did last year, for the “Granddaddy of them all.”
In fact, the UO Athletic ticket office thought they were doing it the same way too. It wasn’t until Tuesday did they find out that the tickets were not going to be turned over to them. Instead they received conformation that all student tickets were given to a third party so that UO Student Affairs would receive kick-backs from Azumano through the sales of their “great deals” to UO Students. To no surprise, the package including only the game ticket is still the only one that is sold out.
UO Student Affairs took advantage of the school’s biggest athletic moment and the most passionate student fan-base in the nation, all for a bottom line. They whored out to a third party so that they could make a couple thousand dollars more. They saw us, the students who pay thousands of dollars in tuition every year as a time to make money, rather than reward students who had supported our boys in green, yellow, black, white and carbon.
A lot of us who follow college football closely here at the University of Oregon thought that we would be talking about money and scandals before the BCS National Title game. But we never knew we would be talking about UO Student Affairs and not Auburn Quarterback, Cam Newton.
A student passion=a profit to be had.
Daily Emerald
December 7, 2010
0
More to Discover