I had heard some grumblings recently that attendance for the Minnesota game was looking soft. I was hoping for the best that it was just that, grumblings. Then Dave Rahme posted an article this morning with "There are plenty of seats available for opener" in the title, which, I believe is a bad sign.
Rahme didn't throw out a number, the one I had heard independently was in the 29K range (the Dome holds 49K+). Rahme noted that the school had sent out an email to those who already had tickets in a Hail Mary attempt to get them to buy more, cutting the price down to $15. I mean, that's Touchdown Town-type numbers. SU and The Dome must be shaking in their boots...
NOT SO FAST!, SU executive senior athletics director Scott Sidwell said to Rahme later in the day. All is well! Nothing to see here!
As of today, Sidwell said, the Orange has sold more than 34,000 tickets to the game in the 49,000-plus seat Carrier Dome. He said ticket sales are ahead of the pace four years ago when 45,000 eventually attended SU's opener vs. West Virginia, and that was a Big East game between two longtime rivals.
Sidwell told me SU has sold roughly 7,000 tickets to the game over the last two days.
The old "compare it to how things were four years ago" tricker. Well played. God know you don't want to bring up last year's home opener against Akron. Sidwell also mentions that Haily Mary email with the massive price reduction has been in the works for weeks and isn't a reactionary move to offset the lack of butts in seats. Uh-huh...
The Post-Standard writers have certainly done their parts, printing missives from former players and giving you every conceivable option available to purchase your tickets. Of course, we're still waiting on one more...the golden goose of the ticket sales push...the yearly Bud Poliquin column in which he tries to convince you to buy season tickets.
He's late, last year's came in mid-August. I'm thinking there's no way we get past Monday before this year's.