Updated:
Since some UNC fans were wondering why the UNC ticket office informed them that the UNC allotment had been sold out, I wanted to provide the updated from the author at the Washington Times:
By: pstevens
All—
I just sent this in an e-mail to a curious Carolina fans, but figured I’d toss it out here as well:
Just heard back from Maryland officials, and here’s apparently what happened:
Maryland offers visiting schools 4,000 tickets. A school can accept whatever number of tickets it wants. North Carolina apparently only took 1,100-1,200 a month or so ago and declined the rest, which went back into the pool of available tickets to the general public.
As a result, when Carolina fans are calling Maryland’s ticket office now for tickets, they’re getting placed in the visiting team section anyway. So odds are, there will be plenty of Carolina blue at one end of Byrd.
So there was no deception on either end, just a crossed wire. Carolina did essentially sell out the portion of the tickets it accepted, and (like Maryland said) there were only roughly 1,100 tickets accepted by the visiting school.
And chances are, whatever surge in ticket sales this week will be at least equally attributable to Carolina fans buying up seats as it is Maryland fans wanting to see an important game for their team.
Original entry from Wednesday:
Nearly three-quarters of the unsold tickets come from a 4,000-seat block set aside for the visiting team. North Carolina has accounted for approximately 1,100 tickets, which is less than the 1,200 both N.C. State and Wake Forest sold for their games last month.
An educated guess as to why sales would be so tepid for fans of a 7-2 team enjoying its best season in a decade? Well, the top-ranked Carolina basketball team opens its season Saturday at 4 p.m., meeting Penn in the Dean Dome.
At this point, we are taking this report at face value in terms of accuracy. The numbers seems low to me considering the tens of thousands of other UNC fans around North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Only 23,600~ can fit in the Dean Dome. This seems like a perfect opportunity to show that UNC fans really do care about football after having 12,000 empty seats for a home game against Boston College just a few weeks ago.
Simply put, when it comes to big time college football, North Carolina leaves a good bit to be desired.
Oh sure, Kenan Stadium only seats 60,000 fans, and with 48,000 in attendance the stadium was 80 percent full, but still, you get the picture. With the Tar Heels in the midst of competing for a Coastal Division championship you’d expect a little more support from the fans, even if they are more concerned about the kind of toothpaste All-American forward Tyler Hansbrough prefers.
The problem here is North Carolina has been, and always will be a basketball school, and nobody short of the Dean Smith of college football coaches will ever be able to change that.
Not even Butch Davis.
And the curious aspect to all of this is whether or not he’s figured that out yet.
