Sellout Streak: Legitimate or not?

Is the sellout streak legitimate?

  • Yes

    Votes: 90 68.7%

  • No

    Votes: 10 7.6%

  • Questionable

    Votes: 10 7.6%

  • Huh???

    Votes: 21 16.0%
  • Total voters
    131
I'm not being defensive. It's simply absurd to see these tinfoil hat theories promulgated as fact, especially when the supporting evidence comes from a fan of another team.

You speak of "legitimacy." What do you define as "legitimate?" Because if it's the fact that EVERY ticket has been bought by a "fan" for every game, then by that benchmark not only does Nebraska fail, but every team in America, in all divisions, fails. This is not a legitimate benchmark by which to judge a sellout. Every team has blocks of seats owned by businesses, and like Nebraska, some have more than others. Those seats are no less "legitimately" sold than any other seat.

If you judge Nebraska's streak by the same benchmarks that you judge every other team in America, then yes, it's legitimate. But the rules for legitimacy must be the same for every team selling tickets.

This email story makes no sense. Every seat is sold to a season-ticket holder. What seats could this email possibly be talking about? Which seats are available on a game-by-game basis? I know of none.

And with all due respect to Caven, the word of an Iowa fan passing along information second-hand from an email received by coworkers sounds less than convincing. Who else received this email? Who in the Athletic Department sent it? Who else at HuskerBoard received it? I know I didn't, nor did anyone else I know. It's bizarre that you would discuss the "legitimacy" of the sellout streak and not the legitimacy of Caven's email story.

 
knapplc said:
I'm not being defensive. It's simply absurd to see these tinfoil hat theories promulgated as fact, especially when the supporting evidence comes from a fan of another team.

You speak of "legitimacy." What do you define as "legitimate?" Because if it's the fact that EVERY ticket has been bought by a "fan" for every game, then by that benchmark not only does Nebraska fail, but every team in America, in all divisions, fails. This is not a legitimate benchmark by which to judge a sellout. Every team has blocks of seats owned by businesses, and like Nebraska, some have more than others. Those seats are no less "legitimately" sold than any other seat.

If you judge Nebraska's streak by the same benchmarks that you judge every other team in America, then yes, it's legitimate. But the rules for legitimacy must be the same for every team selling tickets.

This email story makes no sense. Every seat is sold to a season-ticket holder. What seats could this email possibly be talking about? Which seats are available on a game-by-game basis? I know of none.

And with all due respect to Caven, the word of an Iowa fan passing along information second-hand from an email received by coworkers sounds less than convincing. Who else received this email? Who in the Athletic Department sent it? Who else at HuskerBoard received it? I know I didn't, nor did anyone else I know. It's bizarre that you would discuss the "legitimacy" of the sellout streak and not the legitimacy of Caven's email story.
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I don't know of any other schools that flaunt sellout streaks. Not saying there aren't any, but I just haven't seen it. So I don't mean to single out Nebraska or hold them to different standards.

I haven't made up my mind, which is why I started a thread for discussion (and voted "Questionable" as opposed to "No"). I'm really just interested in hearing whatever details people may have on how some of these tickets were sold in seasons/games where hundreds or even thousands of seats were empty. From there I can form an opinion on how impressive the streak really is.

 
You're clearly interested in finding out how the streak is not legitimate, as evidenced by the fact that you've latched on to Caven's email as fuel for your doubt.

Dozens of schools celebrate attendance records of varying kinds, from largest audience to watch a game to consecutive sellouts. Notre Dame is another school off the top of my head that holds consecutive sellouts in high regard.

If you're interested in discussing the legitimacy of things, and using fans of other teams as sources, I recommend exploring the issue of County Scholarships, and the notorious "Sal is dead, Go Big Red" scandals of the not-too-recent past. You'll find plenty of legitimate discussions of these things from fans of other teams.

 
knapplc said:
You're clearly interested in finding out how the streak is not legitimate, as evidenced by the fact that you've latched on to Caven's email as fuel for your doubt.

Dozens of schools celebrate attendance records of varying kinds, from largest audience to watch a game to consecutive sellouts. Notre Dame is another school off the top of my head that holds consecutive sellouts in high regard.

If you're interested in discussing the legitimacy of things, and using fans of other teams as sources, I recommend exploring the issue of County Scholarships, and the notorious "Sal is dead, Go Big Red" scandals of the not-too-recent past. You'll find plenty of legitimate discussions of these things from fans of other teams.
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Well, we know the official University position. So we start from there and determine if there is evidence to the contrary. I would love to completely buy into the impressiveness of it (I'm a huge Husker fan, believe it or not), but the skeptic in me wants to know the other side's story too.

I don't really see Caven as a fan of another team in this discussion, just as a person presenting the info he has. He doesn't have a horse in the race, and it's pretty clear there is no malevolence coming from him, like I'm assuming there is from the other teams' fans in the other discussions you're referencing.

 
Nebraska's Athletic Department, and the standards by which every other team in America judges sellouts = questionable legitimacy

An Iowa fan's email theory = unquestioned legitimacy

Makes perfect sense when you use that kind of logic. :thumbs

 
If you take every university's official position as gospel, you are bound to fall for some BS here and there.

Again, Caven being an Iowa fan isn't really of much importance to me. He isn't just some anonymous troll that came out of the woodwork to attack all things Nebraska. He's been here for over a year and had hundreds of rational posts. It's not "unquestioned legitimacy"... he has given us reasons to believe he is trustworthy.

 
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I think one question still stands - where are these tickets coming from that were 'reserved' for people to scoop up so the sellout streak could continue? This seems impossible to me, because every single ticket save for visiting fans/student tickets are season tickets, paid for in advance. If they're being sold at a later date, it's because the original owner has no use for them. Places like stubhub and ticketexpress are selling tickets that havealready been paid for, for example.

If I remember correctly, newspapers in 2007 were reporting that Nebraska was in no way going to lose the sellout streak in 2007, because all the tickets were already paid for. If future tickets were not renewed, that would be one thing. But that year, in that season, we were OK. Now, either the AD blatantly lied or this is true. I guess one could debate that, but I'm still stuck with every ticket has already been sold.

Now, if we're debating that the stadium wasn't full and thus isn't a real sellout, that's one thing. But in all regards - every ticket was sold and already paid for.

 
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I see a lot of mis-information......some people have some good points and correct information.

1. Every ticket is a season ticket-except visitor tickets

2. If the University is "giving" away tickets, they had to pay for them. The athletic department has a seperate budget from the University and a self-sustaning one at that.

3. People keep bring up the 2007 season.....remember GameDay being here?!? At the beginning on the year excitment was at an all-time high. See item number 1.

4. Sellouts are different than butts in seats---yes, at the Baylor game in 2008 the student section was a little thin.

5. Season tickets can be "gifted" i.e. because you are a donor you can request more.....but in the end it all comes down to $$$$$$$.

6. Vistor tickets can be returned, but are sold through the ticket office. I recieve emails when this happens, but it is few and far between, and generally a very small number.

7. Any kind of conspriacy is laughable

 
Caven said:
I voted no. There were a few games in the (I think) 2007 season that Nebraska gave away several tickets on Friday evening before the game to preserve the streak. I know of this only because several of my co-workers in Omaha that were recent graduates and members of the alumni association received emails telling them that they could reserve tickets to pick up either Friday night or Saturday morning before the game for free on a first come, first serve basis in order to preserve the streak and one of them asked me if I wanted to go to the game with them. They had tried selling them on Wednesday and Thursday but couldn't get them sold and they needed to do something with them.

Thus in my opinion since these were given away and not sold it should be over. Any school can just give away their tickets for free and claim a sell-out streak. Most don't.
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No.

 
For the comments about the special event tickets - I stated that I didn't know if Nebraska did that. Someone asked where the tickets might have come from and I was simply stating where single game tickets come from by how things are done at Iowa and those are special event blocks and returned visiting team tickets. If Nebraska doesn't do special event tickets - great! I know that I always enjoy giving my Nebraska band friends a hard time because for homecoming they are put in folding chairs down in the corner while we get actual seats in the stands at Iowa. That would be an example of an area of the stadium that Iowa can't sell as season tickets because there is a game they are not available for that doesn't affect Nebraska.

Unlike in Kinnick, Nebraska actually has sideline space in Memorial so it is very possible that they just do this kind of thing with all of their special event attendees and don't need actual stand space.

Maybe the tickets were returned by a visiting team and some speical alumni group bought up a block for some kind of mini-reunion. I really don't know and I wasn't trying to stir up anything. Someone stated earlier in the thread that they wanted an explanation if you voted no and so I gave it using the information I used to form my opinion in the first place. It is like anything that can't be proven - people will believe what they choose to believe. I can't offer any proof and I have said that before. This was asking for an opinion and I gave mine. That doesn't make it correct - it is just an opinion after all.

 
To clarify - not all seats in Memorial Stadium are season tickets. There are scattered single seats throughout the stadium that arent season seats and can be purchased for each game. I have bought these in the past when I needed an extra ticket.

In regards to the sellout streat I think it is questionable at best.

Visitor seats do count toward the sellout streak, or they should. Florida lost their sellout streak this season at 190+ games when they couldnt sell tickets Florida Atlantic returned.

A ticket office employee basically admitted to me they didnt sell all of the tickets to the first two games last year. This goes back to the single seats mentioned above. I had a single seat next to my season tickets the last two years. It was purchased as a season ticket this year by someone. Last year nobody sat in the seat the first two games. I assumed somebody purchased the ticket and sat elsewhere. I happened to need an extra seat for the South Dakota St game and called the ticket office to inquire if the ticket was available. They said it was. I mentioned I had hoped it would be since noone had sat there the first two games. The employees response blew me away. "It didnt get sold for the first two games".

 
slwags said:
To clarify - not all seats in Memorial Stadium are season tickets. There are scattered single seats throughout the stadium that arent season seats and can be purchased for each game. I have bought these in the past when I needed an extra ticket.
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Those individual tickets you purchased are still season tickets. There are absolutely, positively, no seats in Memorial stadium (save for visitor allotted seats) that are not season tickets. There is no such thing as a one-time-use or one game ticket for a Memorial Stadium seat. If the ticket office has 'extra seats', they're either turned in visitor tickets or season ticket spots.

 
i haven't read any of this. is it all a big sarcastic joke, because i would love that.

is anyone serious? because that would make me sad.

 
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