1,000 total tickets to be sold at 20 bucks a pop. 700 basketball tickets reserved for Rick’s Rowdies. Two days to sell these tickets.
The math seems simple, but apparently not simple enough for MSU’s athletics department.
Unfortunately, the numbers added a little differently in the end.
950 tickets sold on Tuesday plus an extra 1,000 sold Wednesday equals 1,950.
700 Rowdies promised tickets on Tuesday minus 286 Rowdies turned away equals some non-Rowdy members getting tickets.
No emails went out informing of Larry Templeton’s decision to exceed the original plan. No explanation was given to the Rowdies who thought they were on the list for Tueday. No apologies were made to students who followed the previous rules.
Some say rules are made to be broken, and after the debacle this week it’s obvious that members of athletics department subscribe to this philosophy.
By changing the rules in the middle of the game, the students at MSU were cheated out of their fair chance to secure season tickets.
The decision to spontaneously sell more tickets than planned was one made in haste and poor taste. Every student should have been given a fair shot at obtaining this year’s coveted Holy Grail-season tickets to witness Mississippi State’s finest on the court.
Hopefully the men’s basketball season will be filled with more fairness than that witnessed this week.
All is not lost since some tickets remain, and with those tickets rest the hopes of jilted students.
The sad truth remains that right now a thousand more should be sitting in the Bryan Athletic Administration building-sitting and waiting to be claimed by eager, chilled fans early Monday mornings before classes.
The Reflector editorial board is made up of opinion editor Angela Adair, news editor Elizabeth Crisp, sports editor Craig Peters, entertainment editor Dustin Barnes, managing editor Pam McTeer and editor in chief Josh Foreman.