I appreciated the front-page article on decreasing attendance at LaVell Edwards Stadium published in the Universe last week. The article does a good job outlining some of the reasons for the drop in fan attendance at the games, but it misses one important reason. Prior to 2014, my family and I had been season ticket holders for more than a dozen years. In theory, because we had purchased tickets for consecutive years, our seats should have been a little better each year, but that was definitely not the case. When the ticket office implemented their new ticket policy for faculty tickets two years ago our seats went 10 rows higher than they had been the year before. I called and asked why that had happened and was politely informed that if I wanted better seats I could always make a donation to the Cougar Club. When it was my turn to buy seats for the 2014 season I discovered that my seats had moved again, another eight rows up (and the price had increased). I told my teenage son, a huge Cougar fan, that we could either buy season tickets again or use that money to help pay for cable. We reluctantly made the decision not to get tickets.
There are plenty of reasons some fans have chosen not to go to the stadium lately, but some of the new policies adopted by the ticket office have definitely made things worse.
Dennis Cutchins
English Department
