Well, I'm kind of glad that the Cornell athletic department has decided to
return to the "classic" waiting line for the season ticket sale, after
fooling around with various other setups in the past.  This year's edition
is pretty much the kind of system (numbers, line checks, sleep over in Lynah
Rink the night before the actual sale) that was in place for quite a while,
up until about four years ago, when construction on Lynah and the new field
house made it unsafe to do the sale that way.  After that, the sales were
conducted using methods that didn't work particularly well -- culminating in
a memorable scene last year, in which several students literally came close
to being trampled.
 
[ Clumsy segue alert ] Anyway, all this has got me wondering how other
schools conduct their season ticket sales, or if they even have any.  About
half the season tickets at Cornell go in the student sale, while the others
are available for Cornell faculty, staff, and the general public.  I was
talking with my friend Bob, a Cornell professor, and he was not pleased with
the fact that the non-student season tix are renewable.  He is interested in
getting tickets but is finding it next to impossible, and he fixes the blame
on "those damn townies" who have held season tickets for years and only go
to a few games.  He also said that when he was out at Wisconsin (15 or 20
years ago), the season tickets were not renewable, which he felt was a
fairer system.  Of course, since I have renewable season tickets, I
disagreed with him :-)
 
So what do other schools do?  I know about RPI's famous waiting line, which
has given rise to legends like the group of students who claimed first place
in line by pitching a tent the day after the Engineers won the 1985 NCAA
championship and camping out there for five or six months.  An excellent
example of either spirit or desperation :-)
--
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and probably '94
LET'S GO RED!!
"So about six months ago, I joined a health club... and I hear it's nice."
-- John Boyd