No Sell-Out, Game Attracts Fewer Harvard Undergrads

Even though Harvard beat University of Pennsylvania last Saturday, The Yale Game will most probably not sell out this year. It won't even be covered on television.

Sell-outs for Yale football games have been rare in recent years, according to Austin C. Sass, Yale's director of Sales and Marketing for athletic events. Sass cited both television broadcasts of the game in previous years and declining enthusiasm among the alumni as reasons for the falling attendance at games.

"The children of the '60s and '70s were never into football," said Sass.

He said that, in the past, tickets for all 70,000 seats at the Yale Bowl have been sold.

At Harvard, too, ticket sales for the game are down. Keith Kozlowski, assistant ticket manager at Harvard, said, "things are not exactly flying out of here."

Kozlowski said that only 4000 tickets had been sold to undergraduates, adding that the sales figure is the lowest he could remember. "I think it has to do with Yale's poor showing in recent years," he said.

This year, the Harvard athletic ticket office was assigned a total of about 16,500 tickets to the game to sell.

Selling tickets at Harvard and Yale is a confusing job, ticket venders agreed. Not only are assignments done by hand they explained, but also both schools use complex priority systems to assign seats. Harvard's system has 13 priority levels, with the President and the Fellows at the top and the Board of Overseers just below them.

"I've been fighting for a computer for many years," said Sass. "It's a massive task. I've got to do a mailing of 50,000 tickets."

Although undergraduates do not have the highest priority, students who have been to the Yale Bowl think that seating there is better than for games at Harvard.

Edmund D. Spevak '86 said of the Bowl--which seats almost 40,000 more sports fans than Harvard's Stadium: "Students really do get good seats."

Robert J. DeVirgilio '86, who went to the last Harvard-Yale game, said, "Even if you're a freshman at the Yale Bowl, you get pretty good seats." DeVirgilio, a Kirkland House resident, said he thought the ticket system worked poorly for sophomores and freshmen at home games.

Even if the seats are bad, though, few students want to move. "You're blocking with people you want to be with, so moving around isn't a big deal," said Ted Chang '87.

Robert Chen '86 said the seats are of secondary importance. "Personally I don't think it really matters that much. You don't go there to see The Game, you go there for the fun."