Valuing profits over points

As the rain kept falling, so did the spirits of the 40,000 plus fans that attended the annual Seattle football game last Saturday.

This year’s event was as much a disaster off the field as it was on, due to the money-grabbing ideology of our WSU Athletic Department, and reaffirmed many Cougar fans adamant belief that the game should not happen in Seattle.

Technically a home game, the football team travels once a year to CenturyLink Field and hosts an opponent. The last three years this opponent has been a member of the Pac-12 Conference.

Really exciting stuff.

This year, to avoid an entire month devoid of Cougar football, last weekend’s contest against Stanford was chosen to be played at “home”, in Seattle.

With an unexciting home schedule (Southern Utah, Idaho, Stanford, Oregon State, Arizona State, and Utah),  the athletic department took the most exciting opponent and moved the game 250 miles away where many students were unable to attend.

To attend the game, you had to go to the ticket office, swipe your pass, and acquire an actual ticket. While the ticket was free, there weren’t enough for everyone with a sports pass.

According to the school’s athletic website, approximately 8,500 seats are available for students with sports passes at Martin Stadium in Pullman. This year’s stadium capacity, with construction, is about 32,700. This means that about 26 percent of the home game crowd, ideally, is made up of students.

For the Seattle game, roughly 2,600 tickets were allocated for student use. If WSU sold all 8,500 sports passes, then 5,900 students would be out of luck, as tickets for the game were handed out on a first-come, first-served basis.

With a capacity of about 67,000 in CenturyLink, students would make up about four percent of the crowd, assuming a sold out game.

Some lucky enough to acquire a ticket did not even make the trip with the travel-distance or the rain impacting their decision. Nothing against the ticket-holders who didn’t go, but it caused the less fortunate who went to Seattle looking for tickets, to find entertainment elsewhere, including — wait for it — attending the UW game.

One of the unique aspects of Martin Stadium is most of its fans are students. When you take this away, you essentially neutralize home-field advantage.

Sure, there was a crowd of about 40,000 last Saturday, more than is possible at Martin, but it was full of people sitting on their hands and shivering in the pouring rain — hardly a crowd worthy of CenturyLink standards.

Mid-way through the third quarter, the game was a blowout and there was no reason to stay in the miserable conditions. And no one did. For those watching on TV, it was evident in the fourth quarter that no fans remained.

WSU sold a victory for Stanford. Who knows what might have happened if the game was played in Pullman, but the university sacrificed its home field advantage for some extra dollars. Athletics would have been better served with a home game at home; wins equal more money anyway.

Unless the Seattle game is played on Labor Day weekend in the future, when many students travel already travel to the west side of the state and the weather is nice enough to bring in a mass audience to a football game, the Seattle game should be put immediately on hiatus.