Nice catch by the Red & Black:
The Athletic Board isn’t cutting available student tickets, but rather available student seats. Instead of 17,910 seats available for students, only 15,856 seats will be open.
However, because the Athletic Board isn’t cutting tickets, student seats will be oversold by approximately 2,800. In the 2012 season, full-season tickets were awarded to 18,645 students, according to a previous article by The Red & Black.
That means if everyone who had tickets came to the game, about 2,800 wouldn’t have seats and overcrowding would become a serious security issue.
A student makes the obvious point that this year’s home schedule is attractive, particularly in September, which makes it likely that seat demand will be greater than last year’s. Is that a potential problem? Not to worry… because. Just because.
Even if overcrowding became a possible issue, Gray said the football operation teams are prepared to combat the problem.
“On game days, the operations and ticket operations staff are in constant communication with not only the fire marshal, but keeping up with stand rates as people come in,” he said. “So, we definitely wouldn’t fall into a situation where there’d be overcrowding.”
In the last four years, the highest scanned total, not including the marching band, was about 14,650 student tickets at the 2011 Auburn game, Gray said.
Essentially, the plan is hoping that history keeps repeating. It’ll be interesting to see if we wind up in a situation this season when the administration hopes that students don’t show up for a big game.