ANN ARBOR — Michigan’s students aren’t the only ones unhappy with the football program and the athletic department. Former students are also less than thrilled. A student protest and an online petition to remove Dave Brandon as the program’s athletic director earlier this month ultimately led to a large price drop for student season football tickets beginning in 2015.
The department cut prices by nearly 40 percent, as students will now pay $185 (including a service fee) for the home slate next year, down from $295 this past season.
However, Michigan alumni have also expressed their displeasure with high costs. Michigan’s Alumni Association gathered reactions from anonymous alums and posted them on the organization’s website.
Those comments are as follows:
• “The athletic department procedures have emptied the cupboard of alumni support over the last several years and it will take a significant change within the department to bolster the level of support and fervor for American Football that existed then.”
With the announcement that prices would drop for students, Michigan also announced that it would keep general population football season tickets at the same price next season. The base price of a season ticket next season, without any preferred seat donation, will stay at $65 per game for the third straight year. For seven home games, that comes to $455.
Beyond that, the Alumni Association also gathered comments from alums addressing concerns over the “Corporatization of Football.”
At a Board of Regents meeting two weeks ago in Flint, Michigan president Mark Schlissel publicly expressed his displeasure with the athletic department’s overall level of transparency during the Shane Morris injury situation, and outlined a number of other issues inside Brandon’s department that are a concern.
He stated he would be deliberate and careful with his examination of the department, which includes Brandon, of course.
At the same time, many around the department and the university have acknowledged that fan displeasure with the athletic department has seemed to bubble over this season.
Regent Mark Bernstein summed up the Morris situation, and the way it was handled, as a “spark in a very, very dry forest.” See more…
