The Wall Street Journal had an interesting graphic charting major football teams on both their strength and their integrity. The grid had a horizontal axis ranging from “Weakling” to “Powerhouse” and a vertical axis marked “Embarrassing” to “Admirable.” Sitting comfortably in the desired upper quadrant is good old Bucky. UW was ranked at the very top of the integrity scale and quite high in the strength scale as well.
The UW Athletic Department’s long tradition of valuing its reputation continues, The Journal noted. This category considered such factors as athlete academic performance, NCAA violations, and off-field transgressions by athletes. Journal researchers also used a “purely subjective, overall ‘ick’ factor,” which placed Penn State off the bottom of the graph.
The first UW game of the season was played last Saturday against a team from out east somewhere called “The Minutemen.” The game started at 11 a.m., and I’d guess that there were a few dozen people who liked that kickoff time. The rest of us would have preferred a more traditional early afternoon start.
I had two extra $45 tickets and so as I walked down Breese Terrace I stopped by a young woman with an “I Need Tickets” sign. She looked at my tickets and quickly said, “I’ll give you $40 for the two of them.” I happily pocketed two $20 bills and entered Camp Randall. About halfway through the first quarter two young men came and sat in the seats. I asked them what they had paid and they told me $40 each. More power to the woman for doubling her money. I don’t like to see resources wasted on enforcing anti-scalper laws. But let the buyer beware. The two young men might have discovered, as the bar codes were scanned at the gate, that the tickets they had just purchased had been deactivated after being reported lost or stolen.
Camp Randall’s new video replay boards and expanded informational scoreboards are definitely an enhancement. Some of the old traditions continue such as Jump Around, elaborate fan waves, and the obscene student chant (dumb, but kids will be kids, right?).
I fully understand why the athletic department made the change from the W Club handling concessions to an outside firm. You’d expect a national company to bring something a local nonprofit group can’t. And they probably have very good reasons for a policy of employing no one younger than 18. But it sounds like they left a lot of money on the table and irritated fans by not having enough hawkers roaming the stands. I have Pepsi-drinking friends who won’t go to a restaurant that serves only Coke, and vice versa. So what is the new concession company thinking when they tell 80,000 UW fans they can have neither, just RC Cola? How about, “Ha ha, you’re a captive audience”?
For as little as $100, a fan can join the Mendota Gridiron Club, which has meetings every Wednesday night in a rotating series of restaurants and other venues, including the stadium’s Buckingham Club. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to hear informal comments and ask questions of the head coach and other athletic department personnel. Coaches at this level tend to be superb communicators and strategic thinkers.
I always learn something from hearing how they manage the team and the rest of the hoopla that goes with it. I can imagine someone asking the speakers this week how they came to the decision to send an email to every season ticket holder apologizing for the shortcomings in concession service. That’s the kind of damage control we sometimes face in our business, and it would be interesting to know how they weighed calling further attention to the problem versus letting it blow over silently.
(Continued)
Bike lane follow-up
My blog two weeks ago about changing North Sherman Avenue to accommodate bicycles drew four comments. Now that might not might seem like a lot, but I don’t have the following of my colleague Dave Blaska, so to me four comments is a big deal.
They were all anonymous, so maybe it was just one person writing four times. Unfortunately, none were complimentary. Some criticized my assumption that roads are paid for my gas taxes.
“The funds for the road change ‘presumably’ come from gas taxes? How hard would it have been to call someone in the city and ask how local roads are paid for, given that you clearly don’t know? … Local roads are mostly paid for by property taxpayers, which include cyclists and pedestrians.”
Okay, I admit I didn’t dial the City-County information desk and ask how local roads are paid for. I couched my laziness by using the word “presumably.” I really should have said, “Motorists and merchants might be less resistant to the change if bicyclists were to chip in for the $100,000 reconfiguration, which presumably comes from gas-tax road funds, and if it doesn’t, it should.”
If local roads are really entirely paid from property tax revenue, it really doesn’t change my contention that bicyclists are benefiting in disproportion to the cost to motorists and local businesses. Presumably, much more property tax revenue comes from people who regularly drive cars than bicyclists. I say presumably because I don’t know for sure. I called city hall and asked if they could tell me the percentage of property tax revenue from bicyclists vs. motorists, and they just laughed at me.
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