Who Needs Tickets?

Back when TigerBlog first started working here, Kurt Kehl - then the Director of Athletic Communications and now a vice president with the Washington Capitals - used to design the world's nicest looking tickets.

They were tremendous to look at, especially if you had a season ticket sheet. They had action pictures of Princeton's best players, and so your ticket for the first game looked different than the second and so on.

It was like one of those sheet cakes with a picture on it that people get for anniversaries and birthday parties.

TB especially remembers the picture he used for the tickets with Gabe Lewullis' picture on them. They were like genuine art.

TigerBlog thought they were the best looking tickets that he'd ever seen, and he had a pretty good appreciation for the effort that went into them.

At the same time, he was a little taken aback by it, because ultimately they were tickets. You hand them to the ticket taker, and what happens next? They get ripped.

Of course, you could make the same case with the game programs.

TigerBlog has been walking to the parking lot many times when he's seen programs for football or basketball or lacrosse or anything else thrown around, discarded, sitting in water and mud and garbage.

And after all the work that went into them? All the time putting them together, writing the stories and everything else? And then they're old news, in a matter of hours.

TB's background is in newspapers, and that's the whole premise of that business. What you work so hard to put together today will be used to wrap fish tomorrow.

TB remembers one time walking into a bagel/deli in Hamilton back when he was writing for the paper, and what did he see? The column he wrote in the paper the day before, sticking out of a garbage can, with, as TB will never forget, scallion cream cheese on his picture.

Speaking of pictures on newspaper columns, TB first had one on a high school tennis column he wrote weekly, 30 years ago. During his time at the paper, he had maybe two or three pictures taken for his column, and that was it.

Other people changed their pictures what appeared to be weekly. Mark Eckel had a great picture of his old 'fro; Harvey Yavener had a great picture with a jacket, tie and shirt, of which no two matched.

Anyway, where was TB?

Oh yeah, tickets.

It became apparent early on Saturday that the weather forecast of snow starting in the late afternoon or evening and not amounting to anything was way off. In fact, it was a snowfest at the Princeton football game from well before kickoff.

As a result, almost nobody came.

Those who were at the game were given a voucher for free tickets to one of the four November men's basketball games, as a sign of appreciation for coming out in such bad weather.

And what about those who bought tickets but didn't come?

At the marketing meeting yesterday, the decision was made to allow people to use their unused Cornell tickets to get into the football game on Nov. 12 against Yale.

All you have to do is bring your unused Cornell ticket to the special promotions window at the stadium on the day of the Yale game, and it will be exchanged for a ticket to the Yale game. If you had your ticket waiting at will call, then those names will be pulled and you can do the exchange that way.

TigerBlog isn't ready to make it a hard and fast rule, but he's pretty sure that any future football games played in October blizzards would be handled similarly.

The Yale game is 10 days away, and the extended forecast is for 63 degrees that day. Even if that doesn't play out, TB is going to go out on a limb and say the weather will be better than it was for the Cornell game.

So bring out the unused ticket, and come to the game.

And then stay for hockey, soccer and basketball.