The Yale expositor., 1911-11-16
ADMISSION TOO HIGH
Price of Tickets Keeps Crowds
at Football Games Small.
ColIegians Just Starting Work Cannot
Afford to Patronize Games at So
Each-Eastern Stadiums Are
Crowded.

The way 10 popularize football is to
popularize the prices Of admission.
From the comparatively small crowds
that have climbed the bleachers at
Marshall field to watch the Maroons
during the last season, football ap-
pears to have lost its vital appeal to
those who used to follow the game,
says writer in the Chicago Journal.
In the east, however, 10000 spectators
jam into the stadiums to watch two
colleges play and there is as much riot
and JOY in the stands as there was in
the good old days of the mass play"
For the privilege of witnessing one
of the games, the eastern college
charges $1.50. In the west, particu-
larly at the University of Chicago, 81
and SO are demanded as an admission
fee from each spectator. The game
is now snappier, faster exhibition
than it ever was, but aside from the
student body who are given 50-cent
rates, not many go out to seesit.
There are thousands of college grad
yates in Chicago to whom the game
is still the only game. Many Of these
swarm out and could not be barred
from witnessing the familiar men in
moleskin hammer away at each other
up and down the field by the most ex-
orbitant of prices. But the others,
those to whom an expenditure of So
to $5 for two tickets is an item OF
note and Importance, confine their in
terest to the perusal of the plays as
set forth in the newspapers the day
after the game The part of the pub
lie that crowds the ball parks in the
summer are accustomed to observing
the national heroes in the national
pastime at an outlay of rs cents. 1t
Is purely the arithmetical difference
between rs cents and SO that keeps
this same part of the public from hie-
ing to the football fields.
To those who overcome their scrup-
les and dig up the necessary funds
required by the gridiron ticket offices,
football still furnishes the thrills and
spirit that it did in it's palmiest days.
People, influenced if not awed by the
price Of admission, restrain them
selves from populating the college
bleachers and in justice to their
sportsmanlike natures circulate the
sentiment that football isn't any good
any more and hardly worth going to
see.
The new rules are quoted as hav-
ing raised havoc with the game and in
this manner those who would have
gone are deferred. All of which is to
intimate that the same ones who de-
ride the new rules and other so-called
detrimental features of football would
swarm out and enjoy the pastme were
the football tickets labeled 81 instead
of IS.
Should the university powers lower
the admission fee, football would come
to the front and inspire the same ju-
bilation and intensity it did five years
ago. 1t might be said for the sake of
argument that the general public, ul-
innate consumer and representative
Of public opinion, would attend the
games, become impressed by the uni
versity and when he acquired Off
springs send them thither for educa-
ton. Many other things of this helpful
nature might occur, and undoubtedly
would.
In the university there is still the
same manifestations on the part of the
students regarding the game.