re: UGA releasing GT non-student tickets at 45 a pop

It definitely helps but in my opinion if someone chooses a college based solely on their football program, they dumb. I wouldn't choose Alabama over UGA, Ohio State over Michigan, Illinois over Northwestern, etc

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To be fair, kids go to college nowadays for the education. And as mentioned, most kids at UGA are getting too smart to even care about football et al. We are closer to being like Ga Tech than we are Auburn or LSU. Football interest directly relates to a college's grandeur.

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Eh. Kids go to college nowadays because they're supposed to/expected to. They go to Grad school for an education (I attended both for both of those reasons). And I know a good number of folks who have graduated UGA and gone on to Harvard and Stanford grad schools and who are still rabidly invested in UGA sports. Sports (particularly college athletics) are a microcosm of society at large. Intelligence or the lack thereof has no correlation to an investment in fanhood. Honestly, it has a lot more to do with an investment to tribalism of sorts; an investment in the athletic programs and what they represent as far as this state and people. We are fans because we identify in these teams, in the power G logo, in the Dawg expression. It's really an old Southern thing, identifying ourselves as a group of people in college athletics (which is different than identifying oneself in the UNiversity itself, which is where the "you didn't go to UGA so you aren't a true fan" crowd gets it twisted). This is all an act of tribalism. Those who don't identify themselves in these things either find their identity in something else entirely or in another tribe for various reasons (Auburn, Tech, Bama, etc.). Me personally, I love the shite out of this state. It's my home. UGA represents my home and my family going back hundreds of years.

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And I know a good number of folks who have graduated UGA and gone on to Harvard and Stanford grad schools and who are still rabidly invested in UGA sports

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my brother and his best friend did exactly this.

and uga football was a large reason they both went to uga for undergrad.

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Do you have these numbers? I looked and couldn't find any...am curious.

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Since 2007, Tuscaloosa has swelled its undergraduate ranks by 33% to over 28,000 students. Faculty count has kept pace: up 400 since 2007 to over 1,700. But it’s more than growth – it’s where the growth is coming from. According to the school, less than a third of the 2007 freshman class of 4,538 students hailed from out of state. By the fall of 2012, more than half (52%) of a freshman class of 6,397 students did

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the school’s out-of-state tuition cost – nearly three times higher than the rate for in-state students – rose from $18,000 to $22,950 a year during that period.

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Add it all up – more students from outside Alabama paying ever-increasing premium tuition bills – and the school realized $50 million more in out-of-state tuition revenue for last fall’s incoming class than it did for the same class in 2007 ($76 million vs. $26 million). Kick in the additional $8.5 million in in-state tuition, which rose to $9,200 a year from $6,400 over the same period, and overall tuition revenue rose to $104 million from $46 million for the respective 2012 and 2007 freshman classes

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more applications mean more selectivity. Six years ago, 64% of students applying to the University of Alabama were accepted. By 2012, the acceptance rate had dropped to 53%. About one in four students from the 2012 freshman class carried a 4.0 high school GPA. The class also includes 241 National Merit Scholars, more than any other public university in the U.S. “The quality of our students has never been higher,” says Mary Spieigel, executive director of undergraduate admissions. “Our recruiters across the nation emphasize all aspects of the University.”

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LINK

Better football = more interest nationally = more money = higher standards.

It should be illegal for state funded schools to give preferential treatment to out of state students. The mission has changed from educating the states children to filling the coffers,at the expense of in state kids.

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I wish I could get a job during UGA orientations during the summer where after they're done with all the froufrou crap like classes and dorms and stuff, they split off and I give a several hour intro course to UGA athletics, primarily centered on football. Our fanbase gets less and less rabid every year it seems.

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I would endorse this. There are plenty of students at the game who either don't have a clue, or just don't care about what's going on in the game right in front of them.

Holy shite I want to go

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What the frick do they do during Orientation nowadays? Isn't the point to become oriented with the campus and the traditions.

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Well, I uh, I learned not to smoke weed in my dorm room so I don't set off the fire alarm. I think I also learned not to spend all my money and go broke or something, I don't really remember.

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If UGA students aren't as rabid as they used to be, it's because they're choosing the University out of default as opposed to a connection they've felt with the campus. It's easy to just sign the admission forms and register for classes when you can afford HOPE to foot the bill to go to the most well known (see "best networked") college in the state.

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I think this sums things up well. Something that surprised me when I started at UGA was the amount of kids that grew up in Southern families, but if the family allegiance was to Auburn/Bama/Tennessee/etc. then that allegiance was maintained even once they began attending UGA. It seemed the choice to attend UGA was based on it making sense because of the HOPE. Had it not been for the HOPE, then those kids would have gone the family legacy route and gone to school out of state. I reckon that coincides with the Yankee-Metro Atlanta deal wherein you have a significant transplant population that didn't grow up living and breathing college football, or if they did it was another school. I specifically knew a few people whose parents went to Alabama and then had their careers bring them to the Atlanta area. Drove me nuts when I realized they cared just as much (if not more) about what Bama was doing on Saturday as they did UGA.