Friday, March 29, 2024

Getting last minute football tickets offers many options for students

The smell of fresh cow manure and alcohol mixes in the misty, chilled morning air on a fall Saturday. You want to be inside Spartan Stadium - a building that can hold more than 72,000 fans - but you still managed to miss the boat, and you have no tickets to the football game.

You've resorted to sifting through the hordes of drunken Spartans, looking for the friendly neighborhood scalper, but you either can't find a cheap enough ticket, or there are no student-seating tickets left.

Don't fret.

Option No. 1 has you going to - gasp! - the ticket office. I know it sounds nuttier than a jar of Planters, but it just might work.

A week before your desired game, head on over to the Athletic Ticket Office in Jenison Fieldhouse and see if there are any student tickets for sale. They run for about $24, but you'll be placed with the rest of the public and not fellow students.

Your dad and mom can score tickets for $42 a pop, except if you want a ticket to the Michigan game - that's $10 more.

Student tickets are easily obtainable by scouting the bulletin boards in campus dorms. Most students who are desperate will try to pawn off their ticket for a cheap price, and you'll be paying even less if the team stinks as much this year as it did last season.

Which brings me to my next point: Why should you even buy a football ticket?

I mean, the Spartans finished with a dismal 4-8 mark, got blown away by rival Michigan 49-3 and had what most analysts called a sub-par recruiting season. Several players got suspended for various reasons, star wide receiver Charles Rogers left early for the NFL and head coach Bobby Williams was fired, among allegations of racism by university officials.

But with former Louisville football head coach John L. Smith at the helm, players have a different take on what the team will be like in 2003.

"I feel we have a very solid team," junior linebacker Ron Stanley said. "Coach Smith came in and got everyone together and we're on the right track. We got the right techniques, we got the right combinations and the right coaches. We just got to go out there and win games."

And several football players are working hard for your dollar.

"We got to make things interesting, like (men's) basketball," sophomore wide receiver Kyle Brown said. "That's what we've got to do. We just got to make things exciting.

"Right out of the gates, in the first game, we got to show everybody what we're capable of. It's hard, because in high school you hear about (the team) everywhere, but in college, it's hard to know what's going on."

Attending a game offers students the chance to hang out with friends in a rare sober state. It's also a bonding activity with your fellow Spartans. Where else in the Lansing area can you cheer silly, obscure chants with 72,000 other happy campers?

That's what I thought.

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