Dec. 20, 2011
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
We’ve had some questions about how seating assignments were made for the AutoZone Liberty Bowl.
1) Vanderbilt is selling the tickets it was allotted from the AutoZone Liberty Bowl.
Most bowl games and conference championships sell their stadium’s center cut tickets to local fans and major sponsors that purchase them annually, regardless which teams are playing. Competing teams are usually placed next. Our seating block is the same one that prior SEC teams in the Liberty Bowl have been issued.
2) Buying through Vanderbilt helps the program.
We are grateful to all fans planning to travel to Memphis. However, fans that purchase tickets through secondary sources such as online ticket sites or even go straight to the bowl’s box office do not register in our block. Instead of saying, for instance, we had 17,000 fans at this game, we are reduced to claiming that another “X” number bought tickets in other ways and that becomes a weaker case when pitching bowls next season. Those getting tickets through our ticket office add to our official total, the other purchases don’t.
3) When you order your ticket doesn’t matter so long as you meet deadlines.
Seating priority is not determined by when the tickets were purchased so long as the priority seating deadline was met. Unlike seating at, for example, a major concert where everyone orders on an equal priority, NCC members were seated before non-members, which is our long standing policy.
Happy holidays everyone. Best wishes for a wonderful New Year!
