FanNation - The Republic of Sport

WTF is going on?? I can't wait to hear the rest of this story!!

It sucks, but I can't think of a fairer way to do it. How do you discriminate between ticket holders? First come first served might have its repercussions.

Why did they leave so many seats empty?

that was a bad move on the SEC not to allow more people to come to the games when it was moved they lost allot of money on that one

It is an ill wind that does not blow somebody some good somewhere.......I think it was Brownie of Katrina fame who said that...just kidding, sounds like something Spitzers hooker said...

The SEC did the right thing. There's no way they could've picked who gets into the games and who doesn't. Limiting it to the bands, cheerleaders, press, friends and family is about as fair as could be expected under the circumstances.

I am surprised that they couldn't move the game to Philips Arena (which is next door to the Georgia Dome) or to the Gwinnett Arena (about 35 minutes NE of downtown), both of which are larger than Alexander Memorial Coliseum. I guess the schedules of those alternatives made it impossible...

Oh my god, such typical Atlanta retardation. There's no excuse for ticket holders to be turned away when the stadium was "more than half empty." This idiotic city runs off track when it rains. A tornado's gonna mess things up for months. I'm not looking foward to getting to work tomorrow....

How was it the city of Atlanta's fought? It was the SEC that made the decision to move it to that location. There were plenty of other arenas the game could have been moved to.

Oh good grief! Is Georgia Tech still mad that they were told to leave the SEC because of crooked ways??? Get over it Georgia Tech. "Send the Yellowjackets to a watery grave!" ROLL TIDE!

Being right next door to the Georgia Dome, Phillips Arena was unfit for play as well.
So many of the fans left town after the Friday tornado, and their teams losing, that there were far less fans still in town. Even fewer headed down to G Tech's Saturday Morning. The SEC screwed up by deciding on who would be allowed in before they even saw how many people showed up to try and get in. Having been there, that arena could have held every single fan that was outside the arena.

I drove 7 hours each way to watch my team at a restaurant.

Jeez, "fans", there's a few more important things in life than getting into a basketball game. The SEC did the best that they could do with an impossible situation. The Georgia Dome can seat over 30,000 for basketball. Tech's arena can seat about 9,000.

Somebody come up with a fair and equitable solution as to how to accomodate everybody and I'm willing to listen. All I've heard so far is people complaining that "they" didn't get in. Would you have been any happier if they filled Tech's arena and you were one of the 2/3rds that didn't get in? I doubt it. The SEC did what they felt was the fairest thing: Don't let anybody in and let them all complain.

Downtown Atlanta looked like a bomb went off. The LAST THING they needed was for 30,000 out-of-towners running around trying to be first in line to a basketball game!

They couldn't move the games to Philips because there was a concert there Saturday night. They couldn't move to Gwinnett Center because there was an Arena Football game there Saturday night. It wouldn't have helped anyways because neither one of them holds anywhere close to how many tickets had been sold. There are a few other places around Atlanta, but the options get worse from there. So, no, there weren't any other options for venues.

What everybody has conveniently forgotten is that, had Bama not made that last second shot to send their game into overtime Friday night, there would have been 20,000+ people spilling out onto the street just as an EF2 tornado was hitting that exact spot. Many of the same people that are complaining about not getting into the games on Saturday or Sunday should be thankful that shot was made and that they aren't lying in a hospital bed or in a morgue!

You also are conviently forgetting that the weather in much of Georgia was EVEN WORSE ON SATURDAY! I spent most of the day on Saturday in my basement hoping that my house would still be standing that night.

So far, there were 2 fatalities on Saturday, estimates of 20-30 possible tornados for the weekend, and an early estimate of $150M worth of damage just to the Georgia Dome, the Georgia World Congress Center, CNN Center, and Philips Arena. That doesn't include all of the other buildings and property that got damaged Friday night or anything from Saturday.

People lost their lives, their homes, and their businesses. And I'm supposed to feel sorry about a bunch of people that didn't get to see their basketball GAME????? I'm as big of a sports fan as anybody, but some things are a whole lot more important in life.

Hopefully, you'll understand why I'm not feeling sympathetic to your plight.

...and here's the proper perspective on things:

http://www.11alive.com/news/gallery/gallery.aspx?gid=113018

Bamabrat, try reading the article. It was the SEC that made the decision, not GT, to limit the fans entering The Alexander "Mammorial" Coliseum.

Cusefan, my understanding is the SEC gave no refunds, so the only people who lost money were the fans (not the SEC).

IMHO, The SEC should have taken tickets from each of the ticketholders who showed up for games at GT and handed out numbered tickets, then had a lottery to let people in. This would have been fair and made a lot more sense than playing the games in an empty arena.

Congrats to UGA for an extremely surprising championship run!

This is like the life boats on the titanic of college basketball.

I live up here in NC, and we had tornados here also that day. Big storm
that day went from freezing cold to hot and sunny to cloudy and windy to thunder and lightning to tornadoes then to rain then back to sunny all in one day

"This is like the life boats on the titanic of college basketball..."

amen brother, amen.