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GMU's Newfound Celebrity Has Fans Fighting for Tickets
Sales Manager Brian Banks, working in the ticket office at George Mason, spent most of the day on the phone answering question from fans on how to get tickets to the NCAA regional semifinals at Verizon Center. (Preston Keres - The Washington Post)
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Some professed years of adoration.
"They said they were alumni who had been following the team for 20 years, and they were longtime fans of the program, that kind of stuff," said James Meyer, director of tickets and promotions for athletic games, sitting at his desk littered with faxed applications that he had sorted into priority piles. He also has a ticket. "I told them all the same thing: Fax the form in."
Still others turned to superstition.
"Crossing fingers," wrote a George Mason employee at the bottom of his fax requesting two tickets.
On the open market, tickets to this weekend's games can cost as much as some people pay for a month's rent. A front-row seat to games at Verizon Center was commanding $1,100, according to TicketsNow.com, an online ticket service near Chicago. The cheap seats high in the upper levels of Verizon Center, however, were going for as little as $140 on TicketsNow.com.
Jeff Greenberg of ascticket.com, a Washington area broker, said a ticket package for Friday's and Sunday's sessions at Verizon Center was running between $1,500 and $2,000 for a top seat.
"The best stuff in the building is running about $1,000 a ticket," he said.
If that sounds like a lot of money, Greenberg said the prices would be even higher if George Mason had more of a history as an athletic powerhouse.
"The buzz is not great," he said. "Do you know anyone who graduated from George Mason? When you don't have any tradition, it's not as big a deal when your team goes to the NCAAs."
But history has to begin somewhere, and for many George Mason students and alumni, making it this far trumps all else going on in the world this week.
"I want three tickets so I can go with two of my buddies who are Mason alumni, too," said Kevin Holmes, who could not get through the busy fax number and went to the ticket office with David Kettner, a friend who was trying to score 12 tickets. "This is the hottest show in town."
Staff writers Susan Kinzie, Dan Steinberg and Eric M. Weiss contributed to this report.
