Des Moines Register
01-19-07
Keeler: Pollard's ISU-Iowa ticket plan bold move
By SEAN KEELER
REGISTER COLUMNIST
But is it genius or insanity to require season tickets for the big rivalry game?
Jamie Pollard is a marketing genius. Here it is, the middle of January, colder
than a witch's armpit, and people are talking Iowa State football at the water
cooler. As the Irish playwright Brendan Behan once noted, there's no such thing
as bad publicity except your own obituary.
"I admire the man because he's going after it," Bob Flynn says of the Iowa State
athletic director. Flynn is a real estate broker based in Boone. He's also been
secretary/treasurer of the Boone-Story County I-Club for about 20 years.
"That's what college fundraising is all about," says Flynn, a 1975 Iowa graduate.
"You have to give the man credit for going in and making some pretty bold
moves."
And none bolder than this. After Aug. 1, you can purchase single-game tickets to
Cyclone football contests at Jack Trice Stadium this fall. Except for one game:
Iowa. For that, you'll need a season ticket. No exceptions.
Pollard, who never met a lion he couldn't tame or a cliff he couldn't dive from, has
spent a good chunk of the past week on the media stump, defending his position.
When I reached him at his office the other day, he explained it with an analogy.
After the Iowa State-Kansas men's basketball game last Saturday, he asked a
fan how he liked it. The fan told him it was the most fun he'd had at Hilton
Coliseum in a long time.
"Well," Pollard replied. "Do you think (Greg McDermott) is working for free? You
stop to think: It cost us $1.5 million up front to have the opportunity to go and try
and hire him. Who has to pay for that?"
You do.
It's the price of doing business in the Big 12 Conference, where all members and their slice of television revenue - are not created equal.
The Cyclones might wind up with 40,000 season tickets and a financial windfall.
They might also wind up with thousands of empty seats for the biggest collegiate
sporting event in the state.
But this is what good entrepreneurs do. They gamble. They take risks.
Give Pollard points for chutzpah. In one swoop, the man threw the gauntlet down
at just about everybody.
Will Iowa State fans, notoriously fickle, step up to the plate, arms outstretched,
wallets open?
Will local businesses, ones that had been cherry-picking the Big Game as a perk,
buy Cyclone season tickets in bulk?
Will Hawkeye fans ante up? Or will they try to call his bluff?
Thanks to a friend with Iowa State ties, Flynn wound up with 10 tickets to the Big
Game two years ago. For 2007, though, he's not so sure.
"It sheds a completely different light on the Iowa-Iowa State game," Flynn says.
"It would be kind of embarrassing for me to put my name on an Iowa State
season-ticket application, but that one ballgame might be worth it."
"There's usually tickets out there if you really want to find them, I think," says
Barb Kahler of Slater, another I-Club member. "I just feel like they're trying to do
what they can and they need the help of the Hawkeyes to do it."
"No way, definitely not," says Jody Busch, an I-Clubber from Boone. "Why would
you spend that much (for a season ticket) and go to one game? I know Jamie
wants to do that, but it's craziness."
Maybe. There's a thin line between genius and insanity. We'll find out in nine
months whether the Cyclones have finally crossed it.