Wisconsin raising student section ticket prices

It was a pretty quiet weekend in Madison, but there was some news regarding student section ticket prices for next year.

Both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jeff Potrykus and Wisconsin State Journal’s Jason Galloway reported that the UW athletic board approved a price increase for student section ticket prices to $27, up from $24.

There was also discussion about what could be done to motivate students to get to games earlier. Senior inside linebacker Arrington Farrar, who Galloway noted is now part of the athletic board “as a student-athlete representative,” added his perspective as a football player of seeing the student section not filled when the team runs out onto the field before opening kickoff.

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said that issue is being looked into by staff.

The student section and its early attendance (or lack thereof) has been an issue on local sports talk in town for some time, and we’ve also tried to tackle the issue.

Sometimes our common discourse gets way beyond issues/solutions and into an angerfest. We are seeing this a lot in Wisconsin football when it comes to Alex Hornibrook—contrast that with Jon’s article that covers the Badgers’ QB in a level-headed manner.

A similar problem around Wisconsin football has been emerging for quite some time in our discourse, particularly on local sports talk radio: the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s football student section’s timeliness problems. When I hear folks talk about this issue, I hear three common points brought up:

I pay a lot for my tickets and I show up on time.

These kids are ungrateful, entitled, lazy punks (get off my lawn and into your seats!)

You aren’t going to change students.

... and then what follows is a lot of anger and yelling. Sometimes, miraculously, the conversation continues to talk about solutions, which are usually to punish students by taking away tickets and raising prices. Simple solutions are for simple problems, and our student section problem is a lot more complicated than the presenting issue.

At first glance, these conclusions make a lot of sense because they are based on the presenting issue. Students are late and late people are lazy, therefore students are lazy. Now, is that true? To some extent yes, but laziness is a really subjective term that requires more analysis.

Let’s take a look at the students’ context that leads to tardiness and some concrete (and pro bono!) recommendations for our buddies over in the Camp Randall administrative offices. Oh, and buckle up. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it certainly is not the soul of policy analysis.

Spring game set for April 13

B5Q confirmed on Monday (Galloway was first to report) with a UW official that the football team’s spring game will be on April 13.

Spring practices will start on March 13. Yes, phase two of college football season will be with us in under a month.

What’s phase one? Well that’s winter conditioning, and Wisconsin released this hype video last week:

Links

• Check out former Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan’s thoughts on this year’s team from Potrykus
• On Land of 10, Sean Keeler spoke with former Nebraska center and interim athletic director Dave Rimington, who says the Huskers need to get to a place where they are “competitive” with the likes of the Buckeyes and Wolverines ... “But No. 1, we’ve got to beat Wisconsin. We’ve got to build a team from scratch that can beat Wisconsin.”
• More from Land of 10, as Jesse Temple looks back on Frank Kaminsky Night.

Looking ahead

• This week’s “Bucky’s 5th Podcast” will feature a few great interviews. One with outgoing redshirt junior guard Matt Ferris, a walk-on who will not return for his final year of eligibility. Then, some 2018 spring football previews with a guest beat writer, and we’ll have a 2019 Wisconsin commit on to discuss his recruiting process. Who? Well, that’s what we call a teaser, folks. The podcast should drop on Wednesday.

Subscribe to Bucky’s 5th Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and TuneIn!