Ticket Massacre

Ticket Massacre
Joe Kerlin
Many of you ran into a similar problem Monday when attempting to reserve your ticket for the upcoming homecoming football game.

The servers on NDSU and GoBison.com websites crashed throughout the day due to the high-levels of traffic caused by student trying to reserve their spot in this weekend’s football game.

Memes were made, tears were shed, and a lot of people’s homecomings were ruined before rolling out of bed Monday morning. We all have to face the reality that not all of us can attend the football games. But that doesn’t mean there’s not something we can do about it.

The football ticket reservation process is one of the most flawed systems here at NDSU. Not only is the weekly reservation system failing, its irritating the student body.

The student ticket process simply needs to be changed. Here’s how:
Unlike in years past, and you going to hate me for this right-off the bat, the athletic department sells the season ticket packages at fifty bucks a pop. Not only would this steer away some “poser” Bison fans to make room for the real ones, it would put more money into the program and into the city of Fargo. The fifty dollars would be added to your tuition total for the semester making it a simple purchase.

The season ticket package would work like this. Starting with in the first few days in August, student entering their senior year and are enrolled in at least 12 or more credits can reserve a season ticket package for all the Bison home games. Every few days, more and more student would become eligible based on number of credits taken here at NDSU, until finally the freshman can put their names in for tickets.

The names of the freshmen who are randomly selected EACH week will be posted on the website on the Monday before the game, and will have to be purchased before Saturday. This allows for a few days of searching for tickets online from fans who aren’t going. They could also just wait until the tailgating challenge the morning of the game. (More on this in a moment)
Let’s say you can’t make the game for whatever reason, you have the option to post your ticket on a “Bison Ticket Exchange” feature only available to students on the GoBison.com website. The week of the game you can create at Craig List like add on the website selling your ticket for ten bucks a pop. If you’re keeping track at home, that’s six Bison home games you can flip to make a quick ten bucks.

All of the unclaimed tickets will be given away during the “Freshman Gauntlet”, on Saturday mornings in the tailgating area. Along with the 20-30 tickets set aside for this event at every Bison home game, freshmen will battle it out Real World/Road Rules Gauntlet style to earn their tickets into the game.

Can you imagine how glorious this would be? Two freshmen literally fighting their way into the game by socking each other around on a small platform, dressed in sparring attire. We could create obstacle courses around the tailgating area and quests that teams will have to complete around the tailgating area. Since crowd involvement is always encouraged, I don’t see why we couldn’t get the whole parking lot involved.

This “Freshmen Gauntlet” has the potential of becoming a more legendary around here more than the football games themselves. And it would be a perfect way to find out who really wants to watch the Bison football games. If you have any ideas for the “Freshman Gauntlet” feel free to email Sam, the editor, with your gauntlet challenge ideas.

The point is, the student ticket process needs to be change. And I think we would all prefer it to be sooner rather than later.