Along with excitement surrounding the Texas Football team’s second appearance in the BCS championship game in the past six years have come questions. Namely, where are all the tickets?
BCS executive director Bill Hancock explains the process.
“Each school gets the same number,” Hancock said. “Both Texas and Alabama received an allotment of 19,000.”
Capacity for the Rose Bowl is 94,000, and Hancock said this year’s per-team allotment is 3,000 tickets higher than the past three years, because the Rose Bowl Stadium’s seating capacity is greater than the other three stadiums that host the game when it is played in Phoenix, New Orleans and Miami.
Even though this game is the Citi BCS National Championship Game, it’s still organized and orchestrated by the local committee — in this case, the Tournament of Roses. The number of seats in the team allotment was negotiated between the BCS group and the Tournament of Roses.
The remainder of the tickets are being used by the Tournament of Roses to honor ongoing relations with members, sponsors and other business and community partners.
After those commitments are met, the schools get their allotment. This year, the initial number turned out to be 19,000, which is less than the 21,500 the university was granted during its 2005 national championship appearance.
And that decrease simply isn’t compatible with a fan base that has grown significantly since the Longhorns won their fifth national championship in 2005.
The Longhorns were blessed with a record 84,000 season-ticket holders for this past season at the newly expanded Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, and Texas Athletics received 32,000 pre-orders for the national championship game by the Dec. 2 deadline.
From this year’s allotment, 1,900 tickets — the usual 10 percent — were reserved for students. In addition, 2,800 were allocated for band, football family members, sponsors as well as university and system officials — the same number as the 2005 dispersal.
That leaves almost 15,000 remaining tickets available for donors to The Longhorn Foundation. Tickets are then allocated according to Athletics policies, and priority is based on annual giving totals with a cumulative total used as a tiebreaker.
“We have been consistent and fair in our ticket policies since The Longhorn Foundation was formed, and we are grateful for our loyal fans who regularly fill our stadium,” Men’s Athletics Director DeLoss Dodds said. “But when we go on the road, the application of our ticket policies can unfortunately only reward a segment of our fans due to demand far exceeding supply.
“We are trying hard to help as many fans as we can make it to the game.”
