Students Camp Out For Football Tickets

Its been seven months since the last college football game was played, and with the start of the new season rapidly approaching this Thursday students are doing whatever it takes to get their hands on tickets for the first game. From Georgia to Virginia Tech students are camping out to make sure they get good seats for their teams’ season openers.

At Clemson University, where the Tigers are set to play the University of Georgia this Saturday night, students started camping out as early as nine days prior to tickets being available. Tickets are given on a first-come first-served basis, and as any student will tell you, sitting farther from the field is never as fun.

For some this is what being a student is all about. According to ClemsonTigers.com, Aaron Nathan, a senior at Clemson, snagged the number one spot with 15-20 of his buddies, but for him that’s nothing new. He was also first in line last year to pick up tickets for the rivalry game against South Carolina.  Being a veteran to the waiting game, Nathan and his group made up a sleep chart to make sure someone is always at their tent.

Students camping out were rewarded when Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney paid a visit Friday morning with doughnuts in hand. Swinney said during his visit “that’s the passion that makes Clemson special…people trying to get tickets to the game and support the Tigers.”

At the University of Alabama students started to camp out the night before tickets were available for pickup to make sure they were one of the first 450 people in order to guarantee a lower bowl seat when the Crimson Tide faces the Virginia Tech Hokies in Atlanta. At Alabama students must already have opted in for tickets before pickup.

To entertain themselves while waiting anxiously for tickets students from Clemson and Alabama both had movie nights to pass the time.

Perhaps most interesting is that students have decided camping out is actually preferable to purchasing tickets online from their own homes.

Students at Oregon State University started a Facebook group a couple of years ago to change the ticketing distribution system and to allow camping out for tickets. Students complained that the online system was “awful” and that “the system would crash when too many students would log on.“

As Kuykendall, a senior from the University of Alabama, simply put it when he arrived 14 hours early to buy tickets, “it rewards the people who want it more.”