Clemson Student President Says Charging For Football Tickets Will "Segregate The Stadium By Economic Status"

Few things to unpack with this one.

First of all, just a hilarious juxtaposition for the two major stories to come out of Clemson yesterday.

First:

Followed by:

Not sure who is running the PR down there, but here’s a tip. Try to at least space out the days that you announce the coach is getting a gigantic contract and that you’re going to start charging students for football tickets for the first time ever.

Especially when that coach is already a walking contradiction.

Now as for the ticket program – Clemson has been (I’m pretty sure) the only school in the country where students get tickets to games absolutely free. A lot of schools get “free” tickets but have “activities fees” that they pay lump sum at some point which basically covers that cost – South Carolina’s is small, at around 100 bucks, while other schools like Coastal charge as much as $1,000. Clemson has no activities fee. It’s just flat out free. Which is absolutely awesome for them.

But now, such is life, Clemson wants to start making some money on it. Actually surprised it took this long. Guess it took an undefeated regular season and National Championship appearance to kickstart the greed machine.

CLEMSON, S.C. (Tigernet.com) —Athletic Director Dan Radakovich and Clemson University have begun the process of implementing a new student ticket program for football games.

Radakovich said the new fee will be elective and students will still have the opportunity to attend home football games for free.

“The way our plan is looking right now, lower-deck tickets would carry a contribution to IPTAY. The upper-deck tickets (3,300 seats) would remain free so that if students were not able to pay those dollars, they could certainly still come to games.”

The fee would be $225 per football season. Students who choose to participate would no longer have to worry about claiming a ticket for each home game.

Hey somebody’s gotta pay Dabo.

The students are (obviously) pissed and have a petition going with almost 10K signatures at the time I’m writing this.

But THIS…this is not the argument you want to make.

Seriously dude? Welcome to America. Actually scratch that, welcome to the world in general. Things are separated by socioeconomic status. People who have more money buy nicer things. People with less money get less nice things. It’s that way in literally, and I mean literally, every aspect of life.

Let’s stick with the tradition/greed/hypocrisy argument and ditch the “unfair to poor people” one.