My wife and I have split four season tickets with another couple for nine years. The wives make about half the games. It's usually my buddy and I going along with my son (14) and/or other friends. We were at the same donor level ($1200) that we are now, but we easily qualified for four tickets in 2006. My problem was finding another ticket for my son (10 at the time).
Now I've read a lot of posts about $500-$600 end zone seats at this time four years ago. I can tell you I never saw them. In fact, end zone seats were going for well over $1000 right before Christmas and got even higher leading up to New Years Day. On most message boards it was all buyers and few sellers after Christmas.
We flew out on January 2 without a fifth ticket. We stayed with some family members who were at the time living in Burbank. They worked for Revolution Studios and had been trying unsuccessfully to get an extra ticket out there. Most of the executives had been buying up everything they could find. I had found one ticket on a USC website for $1600 and would have probably pulled the trigger the next day.
Now that's a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a 10 year old, but this kid bleeds burnt orange like no other. He was even born on an open week in 1995 (between UVa and Tech). So I was comitted to getting him in.
I was still on Texas time Jan 3 and woke up about 5:30am. I got on the Texas website then USC. Amazingly a women from USC had posted on their general board about 5:45am that her husband had a serious health condition and she had to sell two Rose Bowl tickets. She gave her phone number. I called it immediately.
Her husdand was a cop that worked in the Rampart area. He had suffered a heart attack and was at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. She needed to sell the tickets ASAP and wanted $1200 for the pair. She had been instructed by her husband not to take cash. Apparently there was a lot of counterfeit cuurency being passed in his area. She wanted a cashier's check.
Needless to say I scrambled to get everything together and was at the HH emergency room by 9:30am. As I waited in the emergency room across from a little girl with a broken collar bone, I started to feel a little guilty. Of course being an attorney, those feelings quickly passed. I met the woman and we completed our transaction with ambulance sirens blaring in the background.
I posted the second ticket on Hornfans and Orangebloods for $800 and had 10 phone calls within 20 minutes. I ended up meeting a fellow Horn around midnight outside some convenience store near the airport. It looked and felt very much like a drug deal.
And the rest is history. My son squeezed in with us in the Texas end zone. Vince performed his magic. He still messes with me for crying while listening to Bill Little on the postgame show. He will have a hard time ever topping that as a sports moment. We all will. He's 14 now, and heading back out there with us again this year, tickets in hand, and sans wives/mom.
HOOK'EM HORNS!!!!!
Now I've read a lot of posts about $500-$600 end zone seats at this time four years ago. I can tell you I never saw them. In fact, end zone seats were going for well over $1000 right before Christmas and got even higher leading up to New Years Day. On most message boards it was all buyers and few sellers after Christmas.
We flew out on January 2 without a fifth ticket. We stayed with some family members who were at the time living in Burbank. They worked for Revolution Studios and had been trying unsuccessfully to get an extra ticket out there. Most of the executives had been buying up everything they could find. I had found one ticket on a USC website for $1600 and would have probably pulled the trigger the next day.
Now that's a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a 10 year old, but this kid bleeds burnt orange like no other. He was even born on an open week in 1995 (between UVa and Tech). So I was comitted to getting him in.
I was still on Texas time Jan 3 and woke up about 5:30am. I got on the Texas website then USC. Amazingly a women from USC had posted on their general board about 5:45am that her husband had a serious health condition and she had to sell two Rose Bowl tickets. She gave her phone number. I called it immediately.
Her husdand was a cop that worked in the Rampart area. He had suffered a heart attack and was at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. She needed to sell the tickets ASAP and wanted $1200 for the pair. She had been instructed by her husband not to take cash. Apparently there was a lot of counterfeit cuurency being passed in his area. She wanted a cashier's check.
Needless to say I scrambled to get everything together and was at the HH emergency room by 9:30am. As I waited in the emergency room across from a little girl with a broken collar bone, I started to feel a little guilty. Of course being an attorney, those feelings quickly passed. I met the woman and we completed our transaction with ambulance sirens blaring in the background.
I posted the second ticket on Hornfans and Orangebloods for $800 and had 10 phone calls within 20 minutes. I ended up meeting a fellow Horn around midnight outside some convenience store near the airport. It looked and felt very much like a drug deal.
And the rest is history. My son squeezed in with us in the Texas end zone. Vince performed his magic. He still messes with me for crying while listening to Bill Little on the postgame show. He will have a hard time ever topping that as a sports moment. We all will. He's 14 now, and heading back out there with us again this year, tickets in hand, and sans wives/mom.
HOOK'EM HORNS!!!!!
