SEC teams no longer such kind hosts
By BRENT SCHROTENBOER The Associated Press 7/1/2003, 2:36 p.m. CT
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) -- There's no more Mr. Nice Guy these days in SEC ticket offices. Just ask visiting football fans.
<http://ads1.advance.net/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/www.al.com/xml/story/ap/[$category_feed}/s/6220/@StoryAd?x> After years of getting hospitable placement in the lower levels of SEC stadiums, fans of the visiting team are increasingly being banished to upper-level nosebleed seats by the home team. Seven of the 12 SEC schools have uprooted at least 800 visitors seats to the upper deck in the last three years, a trend that will impact the Iron Bowl.
"Over the last few years, we've seen it get worse and worse with other schools," Auburn ticket office manager Tim Jackson said. "We haven't been making major changes, but now it's gotten to the point where our people just aren't going to accept it.
"If other teams are going to put us in lousy seats on the road, then you've got to do the same thing when they come here."
When Alabama travels to Auburn Nov. 22, Crimson Tide fans will notice a change. They'll be sitting in about 1,000 more upper-deck seats than they did two years ago at Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium. In total, about 3,000 out of 10,500 Alabama fans will sit in the upper deck at Auburn this year, Jackson said.
The move is somewhat of a preemptive strike against Alabama despite relatively good ticket relations between the schools in recent history. The Tide is moving several thousand visiting fans out of the north end zone this season.
They'll be split up among the east upper deck, south end zone and north end zone, seriously eroding the noise effectiveness of visiting fans at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Auburn, for example, no longer will have its usual 11,000 seats in the north end zone in Tuscaloosa. When the Tigers visit in 2004, Auburn fans will be divided up to about 3,500 in each of the three areas.
"When Auburn came here (before), they got a large chunk of tickets, and it makes it difficult for our team to hear in that north end zone," said Garrett Klassy, Alabama's ticket manager.
It doesn't help that the visiting team has won the last four meetings.
Jackson was angry to learn that Georgia Tech, a nonconference opponent, was putting all but 785 of 8,500 Auburn fans in the upper deck at Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta on Sept. 6. Georgia Tech is doing the same thing to Georgia, reserving barely enough room in the lower level for the visiting band and school staffers.
Georgia cried foul.
"I was very much stunned they did that," Georgia ticket manager Freddy Jones said.
But the same feelings didn't stop Georgia from moving 3,200 of its visitors' seats to the upper deck three years ago in Athens. Visiting fans at Georgia games formerly occupied the whole west end zone on the lower level.
"And we noticed if our team got backed up on the 3-yard line on the west end, it was like a homefield advantage for the visitor because of the noise down there," Jones said.
So Georgia _and other schools did what they had to do: They shed that old Southern hospitality and started putting visiting fans in seats where they'd have less of an impact on the game.
Of the five SEC schools that haven't moved visiting fans upstairs since 2000, two don't have upper decks (Ole Miss and Vanderbilt).
"We don't have an upper level, but I wish we did for all the schools that stick us up in them all the time," Ole Miss tickets manager Sans Russell said. "I'd give them back the same thing."
South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida also claim not to have significantly moved visiting seating recently, although Florida moved a few thousand visitors' seats upstairs when its stadium expanded in 1991.
LSU followed Florida's lead three years ago when an east upper deck was added to Tiger Stadium. Before the stadium expanded, 6,000 of 7,000 visiting fans for a big game sat in the lower level. Now it's about 3,600 out of 7,000 visiting fans in the lower deck at LSU.
The rest have been kicked upstairs.
"It's happening more and more because you don't want to give the visiting team an advantage, and your own donors and fans pay money for premium seats in the lower level," Alabama's Klassy said. "You don't want to deprive those fans."
One reason for the more friendly former policy was that it was easier on ticket managers to keep visiting fans all in one place all season.
"Or it might have just been Southern hospitality," Auburn's Jackson said.
Auburn even had a contract with Georgia a few years ago in which each side guaranteed the other quality, lower-level seats. Then the two foes started realizing that the agreement made it almost impossible to change the visitors' seating location for other games.
"We finally changed the contract with Georgia where we're not tied to specific seats for that game anymore, so I'm going to start trying to do the same thing to other visitors that they've done to us," Jackson said. "It really ticks our people off when they go on the road and they have sorry seats. They (the other team's fans) had come to a home game here, and visitors have pretty good seats."
Auburn plans to move all but 1,000 of its 5,000 visitors' seats to the upper deck for the Mississippi State game Oct. 18.
"Because that's what we got when we went there last year," Jackson said.
