Schiefelbein: SU ticket sales pick up

• By JOSEPH SCHIEFELBEIN
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Oct 9, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Here’s some good news: For the first time this decade, Southern has more season-ticket holders than the previous season.

In 2000, after three straight Southwestern Athletic Conference titles, SU sold 9,496 season tickets. That number dwindled steadily to last season’s low of around 5,500, Southern Athletic Director Greg LaFleur said. Those sales are now back above 6,000, LaFleur said, for the first time since 2005 (6,443).

One downbeat: Off an 8-3 season a year ago, Southern had fewer season-ticket renewals, at more than 5,200.

However, a “buy one, get one free” promotion for new season-ticket buyers helped get more than 700 new ones.

“The numbers indicated we had to do something drastic,” LaFleur said. “I’m hoping, with the way the team is playing, we can carry the enthusiasm over to next year.”

Here’s the bottom line: While the Jaguar Nation has been good for the SWAC — constantly filling opponents’ piggy banks with huge crowds — the Nation has to learn to be good to itself.

SU’s fans would help their program far more by buying tickets to games at A.W. Mumford Stadium.

But here’s the situation: Black college football is event-oriented and weather-affected. And mostly a walk-up buy. Despite good overall attendance numbers, seasonticket sales — guaranteed money before weather — are low all over.

Other than a home opener, homecoming and games with Jackson State (next season) or Florida A&M, many home games lack the panache of event status.

The games at Alcorn State and Jackson State are event games that enjoyed perfect weather, with a capacity crowd of 22,500 at Alcorn and then 42,513 Saturday at Jackson State.

How much does the weather matter? For the Jackson State game, LaFleur said, only 15,000 tickets were sold by Friday afternoon and only 20,000 as of Saturday morning. One day of sales nearly tripled the take.

So what about bad weather? Well, SU’s home opener traditionally draws a good crowd. But with Hurricane Ike’s winds rolling, the crowd was 14,317, a figure that is outstanding for most teams on the Subdivision Championship level. That one game alone puts SU 16th among 116 teams. However, according to LaFleur, the gate fell $80,000 short off what was projected to be a much larger crowd.

Where won’t that money go? Baseball needs a new pitching coach and could have used a chunk of what was lost for a quality salary to land a quality hire.