One of the biggest perks of being a student fan at U.Va. is the free admission to all Virginia sporting events. Unlike other major institutions, Virginia students don't have to shell out a few bucks to get tickets to football and basketball games.
But beyond getting tickets free of charge, the aspect I like most about the student fan admissions policy is the on-demand aspect of it. There's no need to reserve tickets ahead of time -- if you feel like attending a game, all you have to do is show up with your student ID card. This gives student fans an incentive to broaden their horizons and check out some of the Olympic sports, like the perpetual top-ten men's and women's soccer and lacrosse programs.
Feel like catching a volleyball match? Just head over to Mem Gym and show your card. Tennis? Just stop by Snyder on your way to Clemons and take a look at the two-time defending ACC champion men's tennis team. The women's squad, which just cracked the top 25, is worth watching as well.
Even for football and basketball, fans didn't have to worry about planning ahead of time. Until 2004, that is.
That was the first year Virginia implemented its online ticket reservation system for men's basketball games. The program was dubbed SHOTS, which is an acronym for something like "Sorry, Here's Our Tedious System."
SHOTS required student fans to register for tickets five to six days in advance of the game. The tickets were still free but now had the added inconvenience of forcing a student to plan days ahead of time.
You would have thought that after two years of having the system in place, somebody in the athletic department would have taken a comprehensive look at some of the attendance numbers to see how the new system affected student turnout at men's basketball games. They didn't, of course. But thankfully, fourth-year economics student Shrayes Ramesh did in his distinguished major's thesis.
A former associate sports editor at The Cavalier Daily, Ramesh gathered data from the Virginia Athletics Ticketing Office and ran a series of regressions on the data. He discovered that attendance has neither improved nor declined under the system, but attendance has been redistributed.
Ramesh found that for games against top opponents, which usually draw the highest interest among student fans, student attendance was down. For contests against lower-quality teams, attendance increased.
"The lottery system rewards people for going to crappy games," Ramesh said. "People are opting to go to games against teams like Long Island and Liberty instead of better opponents."
Ramesh believes this is happening because students think that getting tickets for these games is a lot easier, while they don't even think it is worth trying for games against North Carolina and Duke. Students are rewarded with loyalty points for every game they go to and many seem to think that missing a few games will hurt their chances of obtaining tickets for critical ACC contests.
The numbers show otherwise, however. In the two years SHOTS has been in place, there has been only one game where demand has exceeded supply, and that was a Dec. 31 contest against Wake Forest during winter break. In almost two dozen contests during the last two years when classes were in session, every student that has requested a ticket through SHOTS was able to get one.
"They wanted to improve student attendance, and this system really isn't designed to do that," Ramesh said.
The system instead discourages students from attending the games that matter the most. The Athletics Ticketing Office and the athletic department in general has an incentive for shutting these students out, because the extra tickets that had historically been used by students could be sold to the public for profit.
But with the Cavaliers moving into the John Paul Jones Arena, this motive will no longer be there. The 15,000-plus seat arena will not fill to capacity for most games in at least the first few seasons. Additionally, there will be even more space for students in the new arena, giving the athletic department brass extra incentive to up student attendance.
Abolishing the SHOTS system will help make that happen. More students will be inclined to attend the more important games -- those aired on ESPN and seen by a national television audience. While poor attendance in an untelevised contest against Longwood may be slightly embarrassing, it's more important to open up the system and let every student know that he or she will have the chance to see the Cavaliers play the top teams in the ACC. All they have to do is show up with their student ID card.
There is clearly no need for this system here at Virginia. The first online distribution system for student tickets, the one which Virginia based its own system on, was developed at Maryland following a Feb. 2002 incident where several students were injured during a rush to get into Cole Field House for a game against Duke. No such danger exists here at Virginia.
There is no excuse to put up hurdles for students who want to attend men's basketball games; especially not with a massive new arena set to open next season. A return to the system used by every other Virginia sport is in order. Let U.Va. students know that they are welcome to attend any men's basketball game they want and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. With Virginia's JPJ debut on the horizon, now is a better time than ever to make the change.
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