For those Gamecock fans who don’t have the pleasure of experiencing an increase in their tuition fees, you’ll now have the joy of paying a little bit more to see their football team crumble their opposition next fall. For the upcoming 2013-2014 football season, general admission ticket packages and prices will be going up across the board, but not as much as you might think.
This year’s average ticket price will rise up to only about $57.14 which is downright modest seeing as its only about $7 higher than last year’s average ticket sales price of $57.10 — well within the norm for the SEC.
As USC Athletics put it, rising prices simply indicate the growing demand to see our Gamecocks play it out on the football field. Rising ticket prices are a testament to how far we’ve come as a team and how far we can go. As die hard fans of a high-quality team, its only natural for us to pay a little bit more to see our fellow Gamecocks win their way to victory.
However, just because we shouldn’t grope about slightly higher ticket prices doesn’t mean we should take the asinine way USC Athletics treats ticket holders once they get inside Williams Brice — or any other stadium for that matter. It simply doesn’t make sense that two people could pay the same amount for a ticket and end up with drastically different seating options especially when it comes to our very own Gamecock Club members.
We think it’s high time athletics joins the rest of the modern world and switch to a tiered system instead of simply letting stadium seating be a free for-all. It will give general admission holders more options and let people truly decide what they want to pay. After all, we only get the chance to beat Clemson once a year.