I’m not going to be able to go to the game on Saturday. Since the tickets are basically worthless to try and re-sell, anybody want them for free? If so, e-mail me at tickets@excusemeformyvoice.com

For whatever reason, nobody wants to buy my tickets. Any of my loyal readers want them for free? Leave me a comment if you do.

I’ve posted them over on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254354981752

Starting bid: $40 for a total of 7 tickets

1:15 PM kickoff… isn’t this the one you want to take the family to?

As previously noted, I have an all-day commitment on 10/13 and I can’t make it to the game.  You can get my 7 tickets (2 adult and 5 youth (they have never checked if adults use youth tickets)) for as little as $40 ($100 buy-it-now) on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253923640430

Auction ends Thursday morning and I’ll mail you my parking pass for Lower Hearst if you’re interested.

Anybody want my effectively worthless Oregon State tickets?

If so, leave a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll contact you about transferring them to you digitally.

(OSU preview coming by tomorrow morning)

The eBay auction for my Oregon State tickets ends today at 3:22 PM PDT:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253232833908

Starting bid is $30.  Buy It now for $65.  For SEVEN tickets (2 adults, 5 youth)

I’ve got them posted over on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253224951077

$30 starting bid.  $92.50 (half of face value) Buy It Now

It’s ridiculous how little Cal game tickets are going for.  I couldn’t sell my *SEVEN* tickets for $30 total.  That’s $4 and change a piece.

And it’s not even a 7:30 PM game.

Anyone want them for free?  Leave a comment with your e-mail and I’ll get back to you and send them digitally to you.

My USC tickets, all 7 of them, are for sale on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/253165542196?

You could likely get them for a steal.  Starting bid $50, Buy It Now $135 (which is half of face value)

1st auction didn’t get any bids.  They’re a steal at $30 for 3 tickets:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/253155426373

Auction ends tomorrow morning and I’ll have the tickets sent to you digitally before noon.

I’m only bringing a few people to the Ole Miss game, so I’m selling the back row of my tickets on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/253149624300

So if you’ve ever wanted to hear my “brilliant” commentary live and in person at a game, now is your chance.

Auction ends Friday morning and I send the tickets digitally after that.

As promised, I’ve posted the Weber State tickets on eBay.  Starting bid: $30.

Go see the auction here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/253140810665?

It’s a 1-day listing (since they don’t have a 2-day option).  If you want to make an offer below the $40 minimum, leave a comment in this post and once the auction expires I’ll be likely willing to consider it.

As I posted a few times in the off-season, there are a lot of games I won’t be able to make and will be selling tickets for the following games:

• All seven tickets (2 adults + 5 kids) for Weber State on 9/9 @ 2:30 PM – Asking $75 (face value is $155)
• 3 tickets (2 Adults + 1 youth) for Ole Miss on 9/16 @ 7:30 PM – Asking $100 (face value is $150)
• All seven tickets (2 adults + 5 kids) for USC on 9/23 (time TBD) – Asking $150 (face value $270)
• 3 tickets (2 Adults + 1 youth) for WSU on Friday 10/13 @ 7:30 PM – Asking $60 (face value $93)
• All seven tickets (2 adults + 5 kids) for Arizona on 11/4 – Asking $100 (face value $185)

Let me know if you’re interested by leaving a comment in the post.  For longtime readers (you know who you are) I might be willing to cut you an even better deal and consider partial ticket offers right away.  Others I’ll wait until I’m closer to the game date before accepting an offer for part of the seats.

Let me know if you’re interested for Webber State by Tuesday morning.  I’ll put them on eBay later in the day.

As I mentioned about a while back, I’m trying to find someone to split my season tickets (2 adults, 5 kids seats) with.  I haven’t yet found anyone, but I still decided to go ahead and renew before the mid-February deadline to renew.

Which means I’m still looking and also open to more flexible arrangements.  Want just specific games?  Want the whole year?  Heck, even want to propose something that you don’t want to move on until later… make me an offer (or proposal), even one significantly below face value.  As long as it isn’t a joke of an offer, there’s a good chance I will accept.

So, if you want to take your family to a Bears game and you want to do it on the cheap but with pretty good seats, particularly from a logistics stand point, I’m your man.  Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

I’m ready to make a pretty dang good deal for the right person/family…

The schedule for next season came out and I can not make 3 of the 6 games:

• USC on Sat. 9/23
• Arizona on Sat. 10/21
• Oregon State on Sat. 11/4
• (UPDATE: Also looking like Webber St. on 9/11 is trouble for me unless it is a night game)

I’m looking for someone who’d like to buy my tickets for those game.  The season tickets include a parking pass in the Lower Hearst parking lot.  The full package of tickets (which is 2 adult and 5 children’s tickets in section C) are $1250 for the season.  So half would be $625.  I’m willing to sell it for $400.

Why do that when you could just buy single tickets for the games you want?  In addition to the discounted price, you should also want it for the same reason I want to cut a deal (as opposed to giving up my season tickets)… I’ve got great seats!  Well, there’s one caveat, great seats for the cheap part of the stadium.   I really think my seats are the *VERY BEST* seats in the *entire* region that used to be called the “Gold Zone”. (The north endzone cheap seats which goes from section CC to in the northwest corner of the endzone to section W in the northeast corner of the enzone).  Here’s why:

1. We’re in the 1st two rows above the concourse (4 seats in front, 3 seats immediately behind).  That means you get more leg room (the 1st row has a full extra foot of leg room, plus no one sitting in front of you to encroach on your leg room).
2. Being in the 1st two rows above the concourse means every trip to the bathroom or concessions only requires navigating a handful of steps.
3. We’re on the isle, which further makes it easy to get in and out to get food or go to the bathroom.
4. Just above the concourse is a great height to get a good view of the field.  High enough you have depth perspective but not so high/far you feel disconnected from the game.
5. Section C is the furthest west section that has the “above the concourse” extra leg room, so you’ve got the perspective of being more in the corner versus straight down from the endzone.  This also improves visibility and depth perspective.  (Seats in the middle of the endzone it will see “huge running holes” open to go for long yardage but end up being deceptively short runs because you have no side of the field perspective.)
6. Being on the west side means the sun is behind you, not in your face.

The point is, there’s not a single set of seats in the “Gold Zone” that equal that set of benefits.  Yes, it’s not the best seats on the 50 yard line.  There’s no denying there are much better seats in the expensive sections like the ESP area.  But you’re not going to get a half season’s worth of tickets for even two people, much less the seven I’m offering, for $400.

Now, if you’re not a family with at least a couple kids, this probably isn’t the deal for you.  There are only 2 adult tickets (plus 5 children’s).  To be clear about the kids tickets, they don’t check youth vs. adult tickets at the turnstiles.  I always use a children’s ticket just to re-verify they don’t care and nobody has ever said a word about it when scanning my ticket and letting me through.  However, I don’t think it is ethical to buy these tickets from me if you intend to use them all for adults.  I’ve made my peace with using a number of children’s tickets for adults at the night games that are too late for the kids, but only because it’s ridiculous how much they jerk us around with game times.  I’d ask that you intend to do the same thing: You plan to use your children’s tickets for children and will only resort to using them for adults if the schedule or weather makes it unreasonable to bring the kids.

Thus if you are a family with at least a couple kids, I think I’m offering a pretty good deal, particularly considering you get the “good” half of the tickets (no FCS game and the headliner of USC).

Are you interested?  Please leave a comment on the post (put your e-mail in the e-mail field (which isn’t published)) and I’ll get back to you.  If you’re not willing to pay that much, we can discuss that after I contact you.  I might be willing to take less (however, too little and I might also just not renew my tickets or sell them as the games come up). I might also be willing to also let you have the Mississippi State game (or split them?) if you’d like to pay more to have that game as well.  (Update: I might just throw in the Webber St. game for free once they schedule a time (usually in June).)  Heck, I might even be willing to let the whole season go and still pay a small portion so I keep the seats for future years (you pay $1000?).  Point being, I’m pretty flexible in all ways except I need to sell all 3 of the above mentioned games as part of the deal and I need to make the deal before February 20th when season ticket renewals end.  Let me know what suits your fancy.

Hopefully this can be a deal that works out well for both of us.

Can’t make it to the Oregon State game this weekend, so I’m selling my tickets on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/252165271009?

I’ve put my San Diego State tickets for sale on eBay.  $35 starting bid for 7 tickets (2 adults and 5 children).  Auction ends Thursday @ 2:14 PM PDT.  I’ll transfer the tickets digitally so you don’t have to worry about mailing times.

As always, my seats are in section C, on the isle and in the 1st row above the concourse (which has 10″ more leg room).

Auction link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/252084319831?

Well it took up until the last day, but the finally sold out the Nevada game. About time. I guess not everyone is as excited about tomorrow’s game as I am. I’m seriously bouncing off the walls here. My kids think I’m nuts. 🙂

OK, now that I’ve got my 2 lamenting posts out of the way, on to bigger and better things…

What an exciting year we’ve got in front of us!

After giving up on the bench-back seating, I had a choice to make. Do I sit in effectively the same section as I’d had for all of my years as a season ticket holder or do I “downgrade” to the Gold Zone?

(Note, it’s probably worth looking at the seating chart while reading this post.)

Before the construction, we’d had some pretty special seats in DD: Rows 44 and 45, seats 1-3 in both rows. Obviously 1-3 is on the isle, but more importantly, 44 was the first row above the concourse, so there was nobody in front of us and we had a large platform where the kids could walk around. It had a minor downside that people on their way to and from their seats liked to stop on the platform when a play was happening, obscuring our view, but other than that, they were awesome seats, particularly with young children. The seats on the other side of the isle in E would have been even better because they wouldn’t have had the people obstruction, but our seats were still pretty dang good, all things considered.

But again, by the time my selection time came around, seats like that were nowhere to be found in DD. However, I could have gotten a set of seats in the middle of the first row above the handicap section in J (the equivalent of DD on the other side of the 50). Those were pretty good, but we very much liked having two rows. We put the kids in front of us and my wife and I could sit next to each other. With 6 in a row, we’d inevitably end up with them in the middle and each other barely within shouting distance.

Plus, my costs were going to go way up, at least for that year. $1200 down the drain plus the $1800 for 6 seats (OUCH!). We were back to 6 because I’d want them for future years and there’s no reason to compromise down to 4 as I wouldn’t have to make such big donations in future years. But it put a pinch on this year for sure.

But then, while browsing around, I found the miracle I was hoping for.

In section C, in the Gold Zone, the first two rows on the isle, the first rows above the handicapped section/concourse area, were available. 4 in the bottom row, 3 in the one above it. EUREKA!

Sure, section C gave me a bit of pause, but it was offset by the cost. See, for those not in the know, the Gold Zone has not only cheaper prices for adults, it’s the only section with kids pricing. While the $75 savings for the adults was nice, the BIG win was the $175 savings for each kid. With 4 kids, that’s a lot of savings! All told, I would go from $1800 down to $950.

My lone concern was that, as I had learned in 2011, night games provide a challenge if you buy kids seats. I won’t bring a 8 year old, much less a 3 year old, to a 7 PM game, for obvious reasons. And since nobody else will either, when you’ve got kid’s seats, all of a sudden, you’ve got worthless tickets. With the new TV arrangement I expecting plenty of night games, so it was a real concern.

So I e-mailed my very friendly and helpful University donation rep to ask him if there was any way on a game-by-game basis to upgrade children’s seats to adults. He informed me that all I have to do is take the tickets to the ticket office or the ticket window at the game (or a prior game), give them the children’s tickets and pay them the difference, and they’ll issue adult tickets in exchange.

SWEET! That was the final domino to seal my decision.

All of this went down about 3-4 days before my selection window. So I spent the next half week logging in every 15 minutes hoping “my” seats wouldn’t be taken. I have a firm “no praying about sports” rule, but if I didn’t, there would have been rosaries galore!

And my hopes and wishes came true, my selection time came and the seats I desired were still available. HOORAY!

But what’s this? I select my 6 seats, 3 in the front row and 3 behind them on the isle and the system balks. You can’t leave a single seat orphaned, it informs me.

ARG!?!

Thinking quick on my feet, I try multiple combinations to see what it will allow. There’s no way to get just 6 of the 7 available seats. BUT, it will allow me take all 7 of course, and being in the Gold Zone, that 7th seat can be a kid’s seat and only costs an extra $125. Being a devout Catholic, an extra kid’s seats is at most 28 days away from potentially being needed, so what the heck, I’ll take 7. In the mean time, we’ll get some extra butt space. My wife and I can spread out and take the 3 seats for two of us in the upper row and the 4 kids can sit in the front 4 seats.

(BTW, it seems to me that this is an excellent strategy for those desiring more butt-space. For only $125 a season you can buy an extra kid’s seat that you never intend on using and allow yourself to spread out.)

And that’s what we did: 2 adult seats and 1 kid’s seat in the upper row and 4 kid’s seats in the lower row. The more I think about it, the happier I am. For future years I’ve saved myself a considerable sum and for this year I mostly offset the $1200 donation. I “baby proofed” my seat needs for the next couple years, not needing to move if I ever need an additional seat. And, I managed to get seats nearly as nice as I did back in DD pre-construction. True, there be no platform to walk around on, but we also won’t have the obstruction issue either and we’ll still get the extra legroom of having a first row seat.

Needless to say, I’m happy with my seats and I get more excited about opening day in a beautiful new stadium.

Where did everyone else get seats? Any good stories?