Spring Break
Basketball lottery a concern for students
By: John Farmer
Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: News
 Matthew Youngblood - THE BATTALION Thousands of students camp out to pull tickets for the UT game on Jan. 31. Their wait, however, proved to be in vain after the midnight announce-ment that the ticket pull was canceled. |
After Jan. 31, when 6,000 fans attempted to camp out over night for tickets to the game against The University of Texas, a random lottery system was implemented.
"I understand why they are doing it this way," Hubertus said. "It doesn't seem like they have much of a choice. I wish, however, that we'd seen better planning so that we could have a plan for when this point in the season arrived."
During the non-conference games, attendance peaked at close to 11,000, leaving 1,500 seats open. Since conference games began, however, the only two games with open seats were versus Iowa State and Kansas State. The KSU game took place on Jan. 6, before most students were back from the break. Texas A&M played Iowa State on the night before the Texas pull, which many speculate led to a decrease in attendance.
"Clearly, the administration did not expect interest to soar this high," said Craig Birkenfeld, a senior agricultural engineering major. "Once the Texas debacle occurred, I think they've been scrambling to come up with a plan."
As of now, it seems as though the lottery system will be in place until the end of this season. Next year however, there may be a number of changes. One alteration that a number of students expect to be implemented is including a basketball-only option when purchasing sports passes.
"The basketball-only option for sports passes shows the dramatic change going on at A&M," Hubertus said. "We are quickly becoming a basketball school. I think it's awesome."
In the meantime, the lottery system has polarized a number of students. By registering online with Aggie Athletics, students place themselves in a pool. Students who have attended one to three games get two entries into the lottery. Students who have been to four to six games get three entries, and so forth, according to a University-wide e-mail.
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