How "The Big House" got even bigger.

November 22, 1997

Have you ever wondered how it is that the attendance numbers at a major college football game can be thousands of people over the stated capacity of the stadium?  For example, the stated capacity of Michigan Stadium was 102,501 in 1997, yet the reported attendance for the Michigan v. Ohio State game that year was 106,982.  Well, here’s a story of how that happens…

First, a little background:  Tom Goss was the embattled UMich Athletic Director from 1997-2000, and was heavily criticized for a number of decisions during his short tenure.  To me, the dumbest move he made was allowing to stand the decision that incoming freshman in 1997 would receive a split-season ticket package, meaning half of the freshman class would not be allowed to buy tickets to the Michigan v. Ohio State game.  Because apparently, when you have a limited capacity of 102,501 seats to fill, rewarding old alumni who don’t know how to cheer is more important than pissing off a couple of thousand tuition-paying students.  [Historical Note:  Split-season student tickets had never happened before, and there was such a backlash against the decision that it will never happen again.]

Of course, guess who was lucky enough to receive the half-season ticket package that did not include the Ohio State game.  And to throw salt on an open wound, Michigan had to go out and win every game leading up to the Ohio State that season and be ranked #1 in the nation.  Thankfully, someone in the athletic department realized the week of the game that there were a lot of freshman student-athletes who did not have tickets to what would be the biggest game of their entire college career.  Word was quickly spread around the athletic teams that any freshman who did not have tickets to the game could show up early on Saturday and receive a free pass to the game in exchange of putting pom-poms on all of the seats in the student section (I’m not sure who authorized that deal, but there is special place in heaven reserved for that person.)

Fortunately, my roommate was in the same boat as me, so we could make sure we actually got out of bed on Saturday.  I remember that it had snowed overnight and it was butt cold when we got up at the crack of dawn to trudge down to the stadium.  When we got to the stadium, there was a lady standing at the gate and she told us to come back when we done to pick up our game pass.  After our fingers and nose had turned a sufficient amount of black from the frostbite, we were finally done.  When we got back to the entrance gate, there was a stack of what must have been over a hundred passes – but nobody in sight.  After waiting a few minutes, we came to the conclusion that the person must have also gotten frostbite and said “Screw it, I’m outta here.”  Naturally, we did what any poor, starving college student would do when faced with the situation – took a handful and started selling them to people on the street for $50 a pop.  (Why $50, when real tickets were selling for $100s?  Because we decided the passes didn’t look very official and $50 was all people would be willing to pay for a chance we were scam artists.  It’s called real life supply and demand in a free market economy, and part of the reason I could pass Econ 101 a few years later without ever going to class.)

And the rest, as they say, is history.  The passes were general admission, so I squeezed my way in about 20 rows up at the 50-yard line, watched Charles Woodson and David Boston start punching each other right in front of me, watched Charles Woodson run a punt back and 106,000 people turn into pure electricity, watched the guy who lived across the hall get maced by a cop when he ran onto the field after a 21-14 Michigan win, watched a dude fall 20-feet out of a tree and crack his skull open during the impromptu rally on the university president’s front yard after the game.  You know, a typical Saturday for a college student.