University of Virginia Library

Relief Pitching

'Long Nights Cryin' By The Record Machine, Etc.'

By John Mar

DO YOU REMEMBER 1965? Junior high? Going steady?
The early Beatles? Your first Marlboro? Shirts with locker
loops? Sweaters with patches over the elbows? Seventh-grade
femmes fatales? Makin' it at the Drug Fair, Seven-Eleven or
Dairy Queen with the rest of the derelict crew? Long nights
cryin' by the record machine?

It just so happens that, back in old '65, when you were
doing all that "cool dude" stuff, the University of Virginia
threw open the doors of University Hall for ACC basketball
and vacated ancient Memorial Gym. U Hall was quite a
modern marvel back then, seating all of 8,250 people. It
seemed to have more than ample space for anyone interested
in watching the Cavs bumble their way to still another
disappointing season.

Five years later, however, everything changed. The Wahoos
finally started playing winning basketball, Barry Parkhill
arrived on the scene and space in U Hall became scarce almost
overnight. Students stopped passing up games for parties and
studies and townies began responding to the cry of "Get Your
Season Tickets Now." Now, with "Mr. BP" set to play his last
home game ever Saturday night and ticket pick-up for the
Maryland game scheduled this afternoon, it might be time to
have a look at how far our basketball program has come off
the court during those last three years.

TO BEGIN WITH, every game here is now a sellout. It
makes no difference who we're playing, we can sell out just as
well for VMI as we can for UNC. What has disturbed a lot of
people, however, is that, despite all the announced "sellouts"
there have been empty seats in both the student and reserved
seat sections for all games this year. The reasons for the
vacancies in the townie section aren't too hard to figure. There
are just some games (televised contests and VMI games, for
example) that a season-ticket holder who lies in Lynchburg or
Richmond or even Crozet could conceivably feel weren't
worth the trouble of attending. To attend or not is, of course,
this man's privilege, he laid his cash on line, bought his seat
and can elect to do whatever he damn well pleases with it.

Vacancies in the student section, however, create a more
puzzling problem. Already, athletic department and Student
Aid Foundation brass have been looking at the empty seats
and drooling over the possibility of selling them to the public
and cutting back on the 3,800 seat student allotment. Empty
seats at Saturday's North Carolina game were, these men say, a
disgrace. Students are apparently picking up tickets for the
game, denying them to others that might wish to go, and then
not showing up.

WITHOUT CLOUDING THE ISSUE unnecessarily it must
be said that no one knows how many "no shows" there are, as
no turnstile count is kept of the student tickets. It is no
coincidence that almost all the empty seats can be found in
the "nosebleed" sections of U Hall while the lower, better
seats are usually packed to the point of overflowing. Why
should anyone sit up in Section 11, Row W when he can
shoehorn himself, his date, and his date's girl friend from Big
Stone Gap into a better seat. Before anything is done about
reducing the total of student tickets several turnstile counts
should and must be taken. Visible evidence of empty benches
is not enough.

It has to be assumed, however, that there are students who
pick up tickets and then, for one reason or other, don't come
to the game. It's easy to plan to attend a game one or two
weeks in advance and have things get in the way. An "F" on a
Genetics quiz can make a person think twice about attending a
Wednesday night game while an offer of a date from "Mr.
Wonderful" can make any girl think five times about using her
own ticket. Many times these now "extra" tickets can be
palmed off on friends, but, many times they cannot. In that
event the person with the extra ticket has the choice of
turning it back to U Hall or putting up a sign in the Webb
lobby begging someone to take it off his hands. Unfortunately,
a lot of students are employing a third option, that of doing
nothing at all.

MY QUARREL, THOUGH, isn't with the innocent girl
who dutifully goes down, gets her two tickets and then has to
decide between her roommate and "Mr. Wonderful." It's more
with the ticket racketeer who somehow emerges with 14 seats
to every game. Many times this guy will have 14 ID's to go
with his tickets but signs saying "8 Penn State tickets, Come'n
get 'em" and wads of tickets scotch-taped to door with "Take
One" signs on top of them just aren't in the spirit of the
system.

Plenty upset about this is Mr. Larry Stanley, U Hall ticket
manager, who is now refusing to convert student tickets into
guest and date seats. "I'm tired of people getting ten seats to
the games and just waiting out the deadline and using them for
their friends," says Mr. Stanley.

FOR MY OWN PART, I'd much rather have U Hall return
to the "first come, first served" dictum that prevailed from
those "heavy" days when we were all in secondary school until
the advent of winning basketball here. It's not as
super-organized as the present system but at least it's fair and
there's no way to "beat" it. It may work out over the course
of a few years that there is just too much student desire to see
the games and reserved seats will be necessary. I don't feel that
this is the case now. Pick up your Maryland tickets at two
o'clock. We're going to win, you know.