The two-part article recently published on the problems with the student ticketing system for football games more or less addressed the obvious point that there aren’t enough tickets to meet the demand.
It was suggested that returning to a first-come, first-serve hard ticketing system would be more fair. This is true, of course, but it should also be mentioned that a return to a such a system would also greatly reduce the “demand” for tickets. The electronic system makes it easy for students to get tickets. Anybody and everybody logs on and attempts to get tickets simply because they can.
This includes die-hard fans, casual fans and even those who are more or less disinterested in football. A hard ticket system is more fair and efficient because it eliminates the demand for tickets from these disinterested students. Those who care enough about tickets will wait in line, and those who do not, will not wait.
The real problem, and the source of much of the current outrage, is that those who truly want to attend are often deprived of tickets, while the lackadaisical fans often are not. A system is needed where there is some cost (like there was with the old system) to procuring a ticket in order to discourage the uninterested fans from snatching theirs and depriving the rest.