I am liking Pollard less and less. Usually comes off as a complete jerk when ever he opens his mouth.
Pollard On Student Section
- Thread starter SpiderClone
- Start date
The overselling of the student section was a hotly-debated topic. Jamie is using today's (lack of) attendance to show that the decision to oversell was warranted.
This already happened during the McDermott years. The west balcony is not part of the student section anymore and hasn't been for 5-6 years or so.
Obviously it would be better for both events for them to not be at the same time. At least 50% of Saturdays this time of year don't have games. If possible, they should get together and make sure it doesn't happen. It looks like it isn't possible though.
I'm sure DM would love to have another 1400 potential students to come help out.
+1. I can see that. Seems like something that he should just not say anything and move on. Sending out something like that just seems like a "See I'm smarter than all of you" when no one was questioning anything.
This is also how I read the tweet. I get that he is trying to justify the overselling but I don't think calling out his own student section in such a public forum is a good way to do that.
We would all be laughing on here if Gary Barta tweeted about Iowa students' poor attendance.
If this board is any indication, I'm willing to bet that there was a lot of questioning of the policy.
got it. For the students that chose dance marathon over the game, good choice, helping others is always bigger than a basketball game.
Btw, I have zero problem with what JP said, or how he said it. He wants Hilton full. He had to deal with a ton of complaints at the Iowa game because it is oversold. But students have no room to complain about oversold seats if they can't fill out the arena against a conference opponent. (Especially when it is a match up between top 25 opponents, but honestly any conference match up should at least have a better turnout than 40 percent.)
Pollard was just stating facts. Student attendance was pathetic and if you think the main reason for that was dance marathon you're not too good at math. Also, how do you explain all the empty seats at the freaking Kansas game?
They need to sell less student seating next year. There are plenty of people that would love to use those tickets.
They need to sell less student seating next year. There are plenty of people that would love to use those tickets.
He needs to either lay off twitter or have someone else vett before tweeting. This and the Bubu tweets were extremely petty and unprfoffessional. As a big Pollard fan as an AD, I am growing increasingly bothered by his seemingly growing arrogance. I don't blame him for thinking this stuff but he just shouldn't be saying it. It is not professional and becoming an embarrassment.
I think some people might, if they knew ahead of time that there would be a pretty good chance to get some tickets. I had a friend of mine who had some people in town today, and called me a couple of days ago to know if I knew anyone who had tickets. I didn't, but there is a guy who would have bought 6 today if that policy had been in place.
If they were a lousy team, it wouldn't matter.
I don't know if there is a good, reasonable solution.
You could force students to "sign up" for each game, but you have to have an easy way for them to do so which requires paying someone to babysit. I'm guessing the AD has better things to do than that. It turns into a gigantic PITA if students get to pick and choose which games they want tickets to as opposed to "You get all non-break games."
You can't have people stand outside until 15 minutes before tip and then turn them away because students showed up.
I'm betting Jamie would love to have a simple solution like cut down on the student section but I'd bet it's bad for business. Can he make money on selling those seats? Yes. Does he lose some bargaining chips for student fees being used by the athletics department if he's turning away a larger number of students? Most definitely. 35,000 students paying a $40? fee to the athletics department each semester gets a bit tougher to justify to the President if you cut down the number of students who use your #2 product.
He's a businessman...if he thought he could make more money doing something like that he would in a heartbeat but in the big picture it probably doesn't make sense to do so.
You could force students to "sign up" for each game, but you have to have an easy way for them to do so which requires paying someone to babysit. I'm guessing the AD has better things to do than that. It turns into a gigantic PITA if students get to pick and choose which games they want tickets to as opposed to "You get all non-break games."
You can't have people stand outside until 15 minutes before tip and then turn them away because students showed up.
I'm betting Jamie would love to have a simple solution like cut down on the student section but I'd bet it's bad for business. Can he make money on selling those seats? Yes. Does he lose some bargaining chips for student fees being used by the athletics department if he's turning away a larger number of students? Most definitely. 35,000 students paying a $40? fee to the athletics department each semester gets a bit tougher to justify to the President if you cut down the number of students who use your #2 product.
He's a businessman...if he thought he could make more money doing something like that he would in a heartbeat but in the big picture it probably doesn't make sense to do so.
The 'simple' solution is to require students to pick up tickets some day before the game. If you don't pick up your tickets with in a certain amount of time (a couple days), then it can be sold. It would also limit the lines at Hilton (and move them to the ticket office) if you did assigned seating based on showing up to the ticket office, but at the very minimum if you still had it be GA it would allow the AD to resell unclaimed tickets.
Don't have the time to read all of this, but JP needs to realize that there might not be a full game the rest of the season. Why? People are discouraged to wait for games because they might not be able to get in. Forget all other factors, I know people who will not go wait because they don't even know if they can get in.
This is why KU wasn't full. I know of multiple groups that showed up and saw the line that wrapped the entire way around Hilton and decided to leave. When tip-off rolled around, there were still empty seats in the balcony.
Additionally it would let students know in advance if they are getting in to the game, so no waiting only to get turned away at the door.
And you're going to handle refunding tickets how? You're making someone's job a gigantic PITA for not much gain. You still have ****** off students who paid for tickets and aren't getting to use them so you haven't gained anything.
You're creating barriers to entry for students. You're just encouraging students to only show up for big games which is the exact opposite of what you want. You want as many students in Hilton Coliseum as you can each night because you want to make them future donors. In order to do that you have to make it easy.
How many non-top 10 programs do you know of which sell out every game? The answer is not very many. We're no different.
