Virginia Tech Athletics has announced that for the Hokies' final home game student sections in Lane Stadium will change from reserved seats to general admission seating. With how the upcoming holiday could potentially impact attendance, general admission seating will allow students who remain in Blacksburg and have a game ticket the opportunity to sit in their desired student seating section.
General admission seating for students in Cassell Coliseum was recently implemented, and based on the results of the final home football game, will potentially happen for football in 2020 and beyond.
Due to the anticipated demand for access to the North end zone, wristbands will be distributed at the entrance to Gate 7 until maximum capacity in those sections has been reached. All other students will be asked to sit in the student sections in the East stands.
Huge news for student seating in Lane for this year and beyond. They've given up on trying to keep people out of the NEZ and are steering into the skid. If you want in, get there early.
Also, if your student ticket already came with an assignment for this game, that assignment is now invalid. You will sit wherever you can when you enter the stadium. If that is the East, that is the East.
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Love it. Also should get the more interested students into the NEZ as I doubt the social appearance crowd is going to show up early to get a NEZ wristband.
Any idea why the NEZ has been lightly populated this season? There are sections where students don't sit which leads me to believe there's a possible structural problem with the stands in those spots.
They changed the ticketing process before the Duke game.
In the past, students without a North ticket would print off two tickets -- their actual ticket to get them into the stadium, and a friend's north ticket to flash at ushers to get into North. This led to overcrowding, dangerous situations for ushers, and complaints from others about the crowded concourses.
Since the Duke game, anybody who wanted to sit in North would have to scan their North ticket at a separate entrance and receive a special wristband. Without a wristband, students can't sit in North.
The issue is that friend groups that used to sneak into North together can't sit in North unless ever single person in the group had a North ticket to scan. That's why East has been so full this year.
....And it is also why getting into the East side of the stadium has been awful since they started the wristband crap. We have had to leave 30 mins earlier than every before, including big games like Clemson, and we still have trouble getting to our seats for the start. It's effin' ridiculous what Whit has done to the environment at Lane.
I'm tired of going down this road. Neither Whit, rhino sports, VTPD, VT fire marshal nor anyone else did this. This lays at the feet of students who overcrowded NEZ, to the point it was unsafe and not just from an engineering standpoint. Security, law enforcement and EMS have had major struggles the last two years getting into incidents in NEZ.
While I understand that the solution sucks
You mean saying only people with tickets to NEZ can get into NEZ? I've advocated for general admission for all student seating areas but kids wanted guaranteed seats with season tickets.
GA is a significantly better solution than what we had all year. I still think they should allow backfilling after half. I also understand the logistical problem that creates and certainly am not qualified to propose a solution with my limited knowledge on how they're planning on containing capacity.
Basically my argument on the topic is that NEZ should never look under capacity. I'm gor any and every measure that keeps fans there and replaces fans that aren't while remaining st a safe capacity.
I can appreciate students wanting guaranteed seats with season tickets. I also understand that there will be abuses of that system. I cant' say that I sat in my exact seats as a student. I can say that 90%+ of the games I attended I at least sat in the section I was supposed to, and that back then every single student section was mostly full at kickoff. It didn't take long after I left the holes in the SEZ started to form, and that was followed by holes in the top of the east and then a near emptying of the SEZ. That is 100% on the students. Everyone expects students to bend the rules to some extent, but it was getting far too out of hand for the admin to maintain status quo.
Agree 100% something needed to be done there was 0 room in NEZ for the first 2 quarters when I graduated in 15. I just think this wristband deal doesn't solve the problem. GA will make it better but won't keep it full the whole game.
If you are insisting on having it 100% full the entire game there are basically three options.
1. Have it slightly over capacity at kickoff. That is basically what used to happen before it just got out of hand.
2. Have some sort of backfill system
3. Have student there that don't leave
We are closest to going for #3. Without going for the draconian approach of tracking students locations via cell phone having those that arrive first should, in theory, attract the most dedicated students who won't leave early. This may or may not work in practice, but is clearly what we are trying to do. It will almost certainly be better than all of the games this year sans Furman as after Furman students were crowding the East rather than the NEZ so NEZ wasn't even full in the beginning.
Yupp in my ideal world we have 2 and 3 but I know 2 is very much a logistical nightmare.
Yeah, I don't even see why this wristband thing is even an issue... The students did this to themselves. They abused the system and now the school is actively trying to correct it. This isn't punishing the students, but preventing safety problems. Chances are the school's insurance company was the one that required it.
They did the wristbands to improve the logistics of students backing up inside the gate, where tickets were being checked a 2nd time prior to being allowed in the NEZ. That student backup was causing fan flow issues inside the gate for people who come into Lane in the NW corner and try to make their way to the East stands. Now they wristband at the time the ticket is scanned outside the gate, which allows them to replace the 2nd ticket check inside the stadium with a faster wristband check at that point. The fact it prevents non-NEZ ticketholders from getting in the NEZ is a side effect but wasn't the reason for the change.
I understand that, it just seems that even with those measures in place that every game has had specific spots of the NEZ that don't have students sitting in them.
It's always been like that. There might be a group of 10 students and only a couple real football fans. So if one of them is out of town, sick, or otherwise couldn't go their friends in the group would just not go and try and sell their tickets. Trust me, I've seen it.
Not doubting you, just wondered why it's been like that. I was in the Corps for 4 years so I sat in the SEZ, and then my 5th year had tickets in East. I've never experienced NEZ...
It is more true this year than before with the wristband issues mentioned above. The NEZ has always been the "cool" place to be and some people have always left early. The difference is in years past it was overfilled.
Not sure how it works everywhere else, but up here in State College when you enter Beaver Stadium, the entrances are disconnected. If you have tickets for a particular set of stands, you enter in a specific gate. You can't walk around the stadium after you are admitted, so you can't choose to sit in another set of stands.
Back when I was in Blacksburg, 2005, if I recall correctly all the gates allow you to get into the entire stadium and you can choose your own adventure after that.
For the most part, that is still true. Students without a North ticket can enter at any gate. But if they have a North ticket, they have to enter through the special Gate 7 with the wristbands. After that, they can wander the stadium and sit in East if they want -- I did that when I had a friend who graduated last year visit for the Rhode Island game.
You have to enter through Gate 7 if you're actually sitting in North, but they'll scan your North ticket at any gate.
Well, that wasn't what I was told and now I'm grumpy that I walked around the entire stadium just to sit in East.
Yeah, it's a little misleading in the email they send out
YAY!
I remember going to the 97 VT-WVU game at WVU and they just packed the student section, it was a fire hazard, but it was lit. You just had to avoid getting pushed up against the chain link fence.
Kinda sucks for the kids who paid for seasons in the NEZ, but realistically, this is the best way to do it.
You don't get to pick your seats, it's just randomly assigned, so no one paid for a NEZ season ticket. Just a random student season ticket.
Yeah I know how it works but I guess should have been more clear - paid for seasons and were assigned NEZ. That's where their seats are supposed to be and now have to be first in line to sit there.
This ought to help the overcrowding in the NEZ and East Stands. Now is there any way to get any students to sit in the top of the SEZ? I miss seeing old games when even the top of the south was full.
Enforcing SEZ would be too difficult because you would have to enforce East to stop students from sneaking in there and that's too many seats to be doing a headcount with wristbands like they do for North.
If VT wants SEZ full they need to stop trying to stick freshmen up there and sell the whole thing to alumni who will actually sit in their assigned seats.
I'm not saying that we have to force it, but for 15 years the top of the SEZ was mostly full for every game and it was half students. Now it isn't even full for Clemson and ND. I wonder if the Ushers in the East will "close" sections to some extent when they fill up. If you are a student and you are late you spend the 1st quarter in the south.
The bottom line here is we keep trying to stick students in the absolute worst part of the stadium, and unlike most alumni, they have the means and opportunities to sneak into better parts of the stadium. Whether they did it 15 years ago or not, they do now. Stop trying to put students in the worst seats possible and you'll stop seeing those seats empty.
These are the lowest priced tickets, right?
Not sure I understand the complaint.
upper SEZ has not had a student section for the entirety of the past 15 years... at most it's been the past 5-8 years. It was a product of wanting more sideline seats for season ticket holders when we started the whole reseating every few years thing.
old section assignments (circa 2005): http://www.techsideline.com/football/2005/laneseatingchart.jpg
since the reseating / seat premiums (circa 2017): https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2017/02/v...
I can 100% confirm they've have students up there for more than 8 years. I graduated in 2008 and 1 out of 4 years, we were up there.
I know that the lottery I won in 09 was for SEZ, but I'm not sure how that allotment of tickets was decided. Not sure if they were designated for students from the start, or if they were pulled from the unsold tickets.
I got season tix in the NEZ and East in 2009-2011. In 2008 every one of my lottery tix was in the SEZ.
I had season tickets in SEZ my Junior year (2007). It was a big difference from all my other NEZ season ticket years.
I think the school should sell extra South endzone tickets to the public for $10 each. Ticket shows that its the only place to sit.
I'm sure folks would bend the rules though
I like that idea. Should work to fill that section up more.
This is good, but I hope they keep up what they were doing in the East like they did for the Wake game. I sit in sec 5 and students tend to shift over from sec 1 and above down to our area (not super great seats, but better than the students' and they typically come in groups of like 4-6...just wanting to sit with friends) and they do it from the start of the game to the end. If I didn't want to contend with this, I'd pay more for a better seat or I'd move, I know. However, the Wake game they put about 4 ushers near the entrance of the section 5 gate thingy and had them checking everyone's ticket to ward off the student migrations. This as opposed to the trying to do it from the seats or at the end of ramp, causing a major traffic jam. One girl tried to just flash her ticket and speed by the usher, but he, like an angry superhero, snatched her ticket as she was trying to put it away and looked at it, saw it was not sec 5, and tossed her out of our entrance like a tenured MLB umpire. It was beautiful and I wanted to hug him.
well that right there's her problem. That is not how you flash your way into better seats.
Hell she could've had my ticket IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT HEYOOO!!!
When i was a student, you showed your ID at the gate and got in. If you knew the guy at the gate you could bring a friend. #old
I think this is a decent solution, and I like that they are constantly working to improve everything.
#teamwhit
For the most part I agree with this. But there are many things they've "fixed", but they weren't broken to begin with. Announcer, orange smoke, removing Hokie Pokey, etc.
Student general admission for football has been planned for the 2020 season since this past summer (just wasn't fully ready to implement in time for 2019 season). Doing this for Pitt provides them one game of practice, and as they sort of allude to in the press release, they will likely uncover some logistical issues on Saturday and can use that to make some tweaks for the process prior to full implementation for the 2020 season.
In an ideal world, we would be able to expand the NEZ and put the entire student body into that section. Until ticket demand gets that high, I guess this is probably as good as it'll get.
You dang kids get off my lawn with your dang NEZ and SEZ. Late 90's as a student you were in the East Stands, period.
If whatever the University is doing is going to result in a 50-0 blowout of the Panthers and cause Narduzzi to rip off his clothes and run screaming into the night, I'm down with it.