Pitt shafts fans again

Oops, Pitt athletics did it again.

The athletics department managed to screw over Pitt… Oops, Pitt athletics did it again.

The athletics department managed to screw over Pitt students again this year with men’s basketball student season tickets. This year, it was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a fair way to distribute tickets.

Well, you messed up! You messed up big time.

The athletics department came up with a new idea this season in distributing season tickets to students.

Beginning at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, students were supposed to be able to go online to the athletics department’s Web site, punch in their Pitt ID number, Pitt e-mail address and a valid credit card number. The first 1,400 students to do this were supposed to get tickets.

Unfortunately, there was a malfunction. Students began going on the Web site to register late Tuesday night.

By the time I went on the Web site at 8:20 a.m. on Wednesday, the site had crashed. I sat on the Web site for close to two hours while the loading progressed slowly.

The furthest I got was the screen that was supposed to allow me to begin ordering my season tickets, but it kept refreshing every 60 seconds, and there was no progression after that.

Finally I had to go to class. After my 11 a.m. class, I went to the Petersen Events Center and also called the ticket office. The Pitt Police had closed down the ticket lines by the time I arrived at the Pete, and it took forever to get through to the ticket office.

When I finally did get through to an operator, I was told that season tickets were sold out.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, there are several things wrong. The major thing being that the ticket office had no business selling any tickets over the phone or at the Pete on Wednesday morning without some type of announcement that they were doing so.

As soon as they realized that they messed up, the athletics department should have canceled the sale of the tickets. Then they should have put their heads together and come up with a new plan – preferably trying it again and preparing the Web site for a larger volume of traffic, or coming up with a different method of selling tickets.

I guess nobody had the foresight to see that this plan might not go off without a glitch and might have been in need of a backup plan.

But Pitt is so worried about making a buck that they just sold tickets to whomever showed up at the Pete after failing online or were walking through, noticed the line, then decided to hop in it.

What about those who had classes and had no way of getting to the Pete before the tickets were sold out?

Publicity was a problem all along. There were people who did not even know tickets were going on sale on Wednesday, then, to top it off, you just start selling tickets to people who show up.

Unbelievable! As long as you made your money, it doesn’t matter who bought those tickets. It could have been somebody who doesn’t even know what basketball is or somebody who just wants to make a profit by selling their tickets.

Well, last year’s lottery system isn’t looking so bad right now. At least it was somewhat fair. At least everybody had equal opportunity.

Way to go, athletics department. You rip us off by not even offering us one fourth of the stadium’s capacity in tickets, when it is our tuition that helped build the arena, and now you pull this.

The athletics department really dropped the ball this time and, in all likelihood, has no way of correcting this problem. Keep it up; eventually your despicable greed will catch up with you.

Kevin Nash is the assistant sports editor for the Pitt News and is disgusted with the lack concern that Pitt has for its students.