Athletic Association to decrease student tickets

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@SethEmerson: Interesting: UGA is proposing to lower student tickets per football game from 18,000 to 16,000, give the remaining 2,000 to "young alumni."

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ATHENS - Student attendance at Georgia home football games continues to be a problem. And the school continues to look for ways to fix it. The UGA athletic board voted on Tuesday to try a novel approach: Starting with the 2013 season - which has some marquee home games - 2,000 tickets a game will now be made available to young alumni. That entails those who have graduated from the school within the past five years. Of the 18,000 student tickets available for each game, since 2009 the average scan rate (or turnout) has been 11,800, according to UGA. "Needless to say that's a hole in our stadium," athletics director Greg McGarity told the athletic board, during public session on Tuesday evening. "We've sold the tickets to our students but they've not shown up." Essentially, the seats available at Sanford Stadium (92,746 capacity) will be cut from 18,000 to 16,000. The balance will go to the young alumni. But any student who wants a ticket will still be able to get one. The trick is that turnout has been so low - it was estimated that the most that have ever turned out is around 15,000. So UGA is basically "over-subscribing" the amount of tickets it will dole out to students and young alumni, the equivalent of an airline overbooking a flight. But it's not expecting any issue with the fire marshall, based on the low historic student turnout. That's even with home games against Clemson and LSU scheduled for September. McGarity told the board that the athletics department's mantra was: "We've got to come up with something to solve the problem." Outgoing school president Michael Adams told the executive board that he had lunch on Monday with SEC commissioner Mike Slive, and that when Adams told Slive about the plan, the commissioner's "eyes lit up."

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