The Student Ticketing Office sold a total of 186 tickets to students who are making the trek down to Gainesville this weekend for the monumental SEC East showdown with the Florida Gators.
With a student body of more than 30,000, that 186 is a pretty small number of student attendees for one of the biggest games in school history.
The ticket office is quick to point out that every single student request for Florida tickets was granted, but they aren’t so quick to note the deadline for requesting those tickets: July 2. No one could have predicted back in July how big the Florida game would be. Had USC somehow lost a number of games early on, no one would be eager to make the long drive down to The Swamp.
In addition, the ticketing office only sent out one email, on April 16, notifying students of the requirements for requesting tickets to away games. Who knows in April what they will want to do in October?
All we ask is that the request process for away games be conducted after we know whether the matchup is worthy of interstate travel and money.
We’ll give Ticketing this: Although it does force some premature decisions, the away game ticket request process is a vast improvement over last year. Prior to the Georgia game in Athens in 2011, hundreds of students waited in line for hours outside Colonial Life Arena only to be turned away after the university only issued 150 tickets to a football-hungry student body.
It is by no means perfect today, but the ticketing system has made strides since then.