For the first time in school history, South Carolina won the SEC East and are headed to the SEC Championship game. The Gamecocks will face Cam Newton (unless, of course, all of the allegations against him come to fruition and he is ineligible!!) and the Auburn Tigers on December 4, 2010 at 4:00 pm.
Minutes after South Carolina defeated Florida to clinch the East title, we booked our flights and hotel. We figured we would deal with getting tickets later. We soon went onto eBay, Stubhub, RazorGator, and any other online ticket site only to find that the cheapest ticket available was $300+ and those are BAD seats...nosebleed seats in a 71,250 seat venue. We're really fine with bad seats because the atmosphere is what really makes the game, but to pay that much is crazy. We knew this would be a hot ticket considering there are no sales to the general public and South Carolina and Auburn only get 15,900 tickets per school (not many considering USC has an 88,000 seat venue and approximately 30,000 students)...All other tickets go to sponsors and a few to other SEC schools.
Go Gamecocks!
Minutes after South Carolina defeated Florida to clinch the East title, we booked our flights and hotel. We figured we would deal with getting tickets later. We soon went onto eBay, Stubhub, RazorGator, and any other online ticket site only to find that the cheapest ticket available was $300+ and those are BAD seats...nosebleed seats in a 71,250 seat venue. We're really fine with bad seats because the atmosphere is what really makes the game, but to pay that much is crazy. We knew this would be a hot ticket considering there are no sales to the general public and South Carolina and Auburn only get 15,900 tickets per school (not many considering USC has an 88,000 seat venue and approximately 30,000 students)...All other tickets go to sponsors and a few to other SEC schools.
So, we got thinking. We knew a friend who has been a season-ticker holder for years, but didn't want to put him in a position where he'd feel obligated to sell any extra tickets to us...and it actually turns out that he was unable to get tickets because the season-ticket holder/doner lottery is based on a "point" system. The bottom line is...$$$ donated = tickets. After a little more brainstorming, we decided to contact an old colleague from the Cavs who is currently an Associate Athletic Director at Tennessee (another SEC East school). We had met up and had a few drinks with he and his wife (another former Cavs/Rockers employee) at the Final Four in Indianapolis so Steve gave it a try...he sent him an email and within a few days we had 4 tickets at $125 face value in our possession. When we received them in the mail, we realized these weren't just any seats, these were prime lower level seats at the 30-35 yard line! Seats similar to this are selling for $750 apiece online...
We admit we got really lucky, but it obviously doesn't hurt to know the right people :)
Here is the seating chart...
The game will be played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA. Steve and I will be joined by our friends and USC alumni Jon & Cal as well as countless other USC fans. We're looking forward to it!
Go Gamecocks!
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