Column: From the Morgue to the Crazies

By the time it was all over on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, two students stood on the Conte Forum steps, smoking cigars and watching others carry futons, chairs, blankets, and pillows back to their Mods, residence halls, and off-campus apartments. The stogie smokers were two of the successful ones, holding season tickets in their hands. The cigars were celebratory, but their tale of triumph was only one side to the ticket selling story.

While they smoked their cigars, others felt as though the whole situation had wound up with the athletics department dumping their ashes on them.

After the ticket selling went down, the away messages on AOL and AIM went up. Some called for Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo's head. Others simply showed the displeasure of seniors who felt like they were robbed of seeing the first year in the ACC after supporting the team for three years in the Big East. A few called for students to boycott the athletics department by not attending the nationally televised football game this weekend against Virginia. They figured if we can't protest the situation when basketball season is on, let's hit them during football season when there are more students with tickets.

The tensions were high from those that did not get tickets, but all of athletics' intentions were not yet known. The reason that athletics changed its policy regarding ticket sales was because so many basketball tickets were still not picked up in January last year. In numbers, so many was actually 1,200 tickets collecting dust two months into the season.

Somehow, there needed to be change. The case was apparent that some students were buying all three - football, basketball, and hockey tickets - at the same time, and they were not necessarily avid fans, just fans of one or two sports and throwing in the third set to complete the trifecta.

Tickets that were not picked up meant empty seats. After hearing for years about the "Conte Morgue" and lack of dedication by BC fans, athletics took the initiative to change things. And for an athletics department looking to increase enthusiasm and excitement heading into the ACC, DeFilippo and his deputies knew that something had to be done to shake things up.

"We had no way of knowing that 4,600 students would turn out after 1,200 were not picked up until January last year," DeFilippo said. "I really, really feel sorry for the disappointed students, but with 9,000 undergraduates and 2,300 students tickets, you are going to have disappointed students either way. We are thinking about ideas for next year. Maybe a lottery system is the answer."

This year, tickets for all three main revenue sports weren't sold together as they had been in years past. Instead, football was sold in the summer and basketball and hockey tickets were to go on sale two weeks ago. When the tickets did go on sale via the Internet, technical problems collapsed the system and athletics was forced to rethink its plan.

So they did. The best situation they thought of was to put the tickets on sale at 7 a.m. Thursday. An e-mail issued earlier that week reminded students that Conte Forum would be open overnight for students looking to buy tickets. No one, though, athletics officials or regular students, thought that the number of students waiting to get into Conte to buy tickets would reach 2,100 so early.

The decision to sell the tickets earlier than 7 a.m. ruffled some of the Eagles' fans feathers, but the number of students in line was more than 2,100 and so the number of tickets to students in line matched up. Game. Set. Match. When the number of students met up with the number of student tickets available then that was that.

Still, the situation left some of the devoted fans who did consistently show up out in the cold. If tickets are to be sold like this and weed out the less loyal fans then there should be a monitoring system as to who is going to games and who is not.

This year is a wash on the issue now, but the future should have a system as such. The idea of a Kryzewskiville-like atmosphere was not what the athletics department was expecting, and neither were most students. But the tickets were sold to the first-comers.

Why didn't some of the diehards show up? Some had jobs and others had responsibilities to attend to during a weeknight in the first semester of their last year on campus.

The whole issue now is one of supply and demand. BC is hot, hotter than it has ever been. The spotlight is on the school, and the tickets are being swallowed up. Conte holds 8,606 fans for basketball and 7,844 for hockey. Currently, 25 percent of the tickets for each sport go to students. If athletics ups that number then more students get in and less have to watch the games on TV.

Athletics and its marketing wing, in particular, have done a tremendous job of selling the school and the ACC move. The ACC name and logo can sell itself in many ways, but the job was only helped by marketing's push to get BC more ad space and get its name out all over town. Unbridled enthusiasm that has never been seen in Chestnut Hill is becoming a mainstay, and you have to tip your cap for that feat.

So now comes the question: What's next? It's the question that DeFilippo and his staff ask after each big move they make, and now the issue of student seats for the future is at hand.

There are ideas being traded within the department about a lottery system or a similar setup. No one knows quite yet what the solution will be now that Skinnervilles and York towns have replaced the "Conte Morgues" of yester-year, but the problem is one that BC should enjoy having.

Getting fans to come used to be the problem. Now the issue is figuring out how best to accommodate the raised demand.

Not a bad problem to have.