Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game?

Re: Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game

A hoax?

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2011/12/1/2602611/a-conversation-with-the-b1g-seatfiller-hoaxster

 

Re: Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game

As an aside, the whole "B1G" thing has got to go. Works OK as a logo, but not in regular typefaces. Worst idea since CBS called a TV show "NUMB3RS."

 

Re: Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game

They should do that for 80 percent of the games, college and pro, in the entire freaking country. I'd be in favor of dropping attendance figures entirely.

I once had an SID for a D-2 school tell me that he had been told that if he ever announces a basketball attendance of less than 1,000, he'll be fired. We'd have people covering games there tell us there were maybe 200 people in the stands, and the official box would have attendance listed as something like 1,079.

God forbid you have a poor attendance night and be able to be honest about it.

I always thought that would be a fun little story, to send someone to a game and have them literally count heads. Then compare it to the announced attendance. Do it at different schools/different sports, and see how it's explained away. It would be funny to see them claim with a straight face that there were 800 tickets sold but not used for a bad D-II women's basketball game.

 

Re: Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game

One of the funniest columns I've ever read or edited was a New Year's Day column by our paper's lead columnist. The local CBA team (keep in mind, this was 20 years ago, not today's flourishing CBA) played at 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Columnist used the first 47 lines of his column to list each of the 47 people in attendance at the stadium that held more than 8,000.

 

Re: Big 10 Paying $75 For Seat Fillers to Watch Title Game

Rotate the game between Soldier Field and Lambeau. (depending on who is home that week every year) Arrowhead does it all the time and even has NFL the next day...

 

I thought it was common knowledge that it was a hoax.

 

Soldier Field will never host this game until the fix that embarrassing excuse of a turf.

 

And put a roof on the joint.

 

or rotate it between Lambeau and Ford. or Ford and whatever replaces the Metrodome. Indy got first dibs because Indy does a good job hosting the B1G hoops tourney, but Indy is a hoops town.

 

Again, Indy is a great, sporting event hosting town. Period. EVERYTHING (bars, restaurants, hotels, shopping, entertainment) are located within blocks of the stadium....which is also a great place to watch a game. It's also geographically equitable to most of the conference. Detroit (and I'm a Michigander) is still a dump. Chicago is great, but it's over priced, & f*cking COLD in December. You're also not walking from your hotel, to a bar, to the stadium & back again. Forget the silly romantic notion wrapped around playing the B1G championship outside....it's REALLY F*CKING COLD most December evenings in the rust belt. If there's an issue with game attendance, it certainly shouldn't be because of the location. At least from the perspective of someone who actually bought tickets to the game.

 

The National media will still torch Indy to shreds during Super Bowl week because they're going to be bored (no free golf and from what I hear, the strip clubs in Indy are weak) and they're going to have written all the features about the two teams before Super Bowl week and as a result, they'll fall back on the laziest column device: ripping a city.