For those of you interested in my UGA season ticket dilemma, you may appreciate this correspondence between myself and the UGA Athletic Director.

Mr. McGarity:

I write to you in regard to 2018 football season ticket prices.

I've been a season ticket holder since I graduated from the University in 2002. I have attended almost every home game in that time. It has been my dream that I will be able to continue attending games in Sanford Stadium for the rest of my life. For the first time in the past 15 years, this year's jump in season ticket prices has me wondering if that will be possible.

I recognize the need for the Athletic Department to raise funds to maintain its competitiveness. I don't begrudge small adjustments from year to year – especially after championship seasons – to maintain operations in football and other sports.

However, I consider a 50% jump in ticket prices year-over-year to be excessive, even after reading the justifications provided at georgiadogs.com, especially considering that a less painful 25% increase per ticket would still have placed UGA squarely in the middle of the pack of your listed comparables. I would have hoped that loyalty would have some value to the Athletic Department, but if your goal is to price out longtime ticket holders in pursuit of deeper pockets, that's your prerogative.

Please know that despite my disappointment at the steep increase in price and the difficulty it presents to my personal budget, I still plan to renew my season tickets for 2018 and beyond. I do so with the hope that going forward, I shall not again experience such a sticker shock.

Go Dawgs!

Walter Stephens, BFA 2002

To my surprise, I received a handwritten response, transcribed below.

(Before I go any further, let me publicly thank Mr. McGarity for responding, period. I'm sure if he'd read any of the terrible things I've said about him in the past 8 years here on my blog — which is accessible to Google — he would already have banned me from campus.)

Dear Walter,

Thanks for your letter of 2.8.18. I do understand the dilemma these ticket price increases caught our fans and in a perfect world, increases would never be necessary. I wish that were so! But in order to make all parts of our program work at the highest levels, football is one of the areas that allows us to raise the essential revenue.

I hope future increases are more in line with previous year increases, if and when necessary.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely, Greg McGarity

Any price we football fans can pay is worth it to help the equestrian team win another national championship, I guess. Go horse-Dawgs!

Actually, I probably shouldn't pick on the equestrian team. Their most recent national title came in 2014 and is one of the few titles to be won by UGA teams since McGarity replaced Damon Evans (fired for having a DUI and red panties!) in 2010. Everyone knows UGA basketball is terrible and many other sports are under performing. Boosters have been pressuring for McGarity's replacement. Obviously, McGarity sees diving into football fans' pockets as a potential solution to his department's other woes.

I'm not sure I agree, but I'm willing to wait and find out. At least for one more year.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football georgia greedy mcgarity news Logical syllogism #1:

Logical syllogism #2:

Logical syllogism #3 (the important one): What the fuck, Kirby? I know that most of you are sick and tired of hearing about UGA's terrible football season. But I'm not done talking about it because I just read this:

"The model that we would establish in the future would have seven home games every year. If you look at the models of other schools that have played for the (BCS) championship lately, there’s always one tough nonconference game."

That's UGA band new Athletic Director Greg McGarity quoted in an article in this week's Athens Banner-Herald flat-out saying that Georgia will in the future be scheduling extra cupcake opponents at home to pad the team record and the Athletic Department's pocketbook. UGA currently schedules 6 home games, 5 away games, and 1 game at a "neutral" site. McGarity clearly intends to change this distribution, and not by dropping the "neutral" site.

The article is ostensibly about UGA dropping a pair of games against Oregon in the 2015-1016 seasons. I agree with McGarity's reasoning for dropping the series, scheduled by his lying, womanizing predecessor. He argues that the time-consuming cross-country travel is perhaps inappropriate for college athletics, even if he does come across as someone with a typically substandard UGA-caliber education:

"We think we’re going a long way this week [to Boulder, Colorado], try Eugene, [Oregon]. That’s even further."

I'm pleased to hear that McGarity passed geography, even if he did fail grammar. Sounds like it's not just the students who could use a little more time in the classroom, McGarity.

Yes, the UGA program is in trouble. The players can't put together 4 quarters of consistent play, partially in thanks to the coaches' inability to create a practical gameplan. [Bobo!] The team wilts from opposition and collapses under pressure. The "student-athletes" are incredibly spoiled and undisciplined -- the tenth UGA player this season was arrested earlier this week for an under-aged DUI! And the solution to this problem as proposed by our newest AD, ostensibly hired by UGA President Michael Adams for his strength of character, is "let's play more easy teams"?

In that case, I've got something to say, too: Fuck you.

If I wanted to cheer for a team who scheduled weak opponents for boringly lopsided cupcake home games as a flimsy excuse to sell tickets for an extra game that no one cares about, I'd pull for scum like Alabama or Florida. If your solution to our character problems is to sacrifice some smaller and financially poorer school in order to artificially inflate our players' and boosters' egos, I want no part of it.

There are still plenty of schools who aren't willing to sell their souls in order to scrounge up a few meaningless football wins. And if this foolish babble is indicative of UGA's new Athletic Director's direction, one of those schools will be the proud benefactor of this fan's fanaticism.
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