Trustees to consider athletics plan

While the men's basketball team begins its exhibition season against St. Joseph's College Friday at Assembly Hall, IU trustees in Richmond, Ind., are expected to OK a plan to re-allocate student seats in Assembly Hall and raise student ticket prices for the 2006-07 season.\nIn addition to other measures, the new plan will give 500 student seats from the lower level of Assembly Hall to donors, increase individual student ticket prices by $4 and begin charging admission to Olympic sports. The plan also relies on increased football revenue. IU Athletics Director Rick Greenspan is confident the department will meet its $4.3 million revenue goal this year.\nTrustee Thomas Reilly Jr. said he will vote in favor of what he called a "fairly sophisticated business plan."\n"I'll vote for it because I haven't heard any other plans that work," he said. \nGreenspan said the department has begun to formulate which student seats will be turned into donor seats but added nothing will be final until the trustees vote. \n"We're not going to get too far ahead of our headlights until this plan is approved, modified, ratified," Greenspan said after an Oct. 18 Bloomington Faculty Council meeting.\nThe trustees are happy with the new plan because it replaces the athletics fee, Reilly said.\n"The students cannot get a bye on this one," he said.\nBut IU Student Association President Alex Shortle defended students, calling Reilly's comments "incredibly infuriating."\n"We're the ones that demand the seats at Assembly Hall," he said.\nGreenspan said the seats will be taken from Assembly Hall's lower level. Currently, students are given 3,600 lower-level and 3,600 upper-level seats in Assembly Hall.\nThe new donor seats are expected to raise $750,000 per year while the increased student ticket prices are expected to raise $530,400 per year, according to Greenspan's figures. Student tickets currently cost $11. \nBoth the re-allocation of the student seats and ticket increases will subsidize the athletics fee, which IU President Adam Herbert said he will not introduce next year. The athletics fee accounted for $1,016,200 of the 2005-06 athletics budget.\nShortle said the athletics fee could be replaced if, instead of re-allocating and increasing the price of student seats, the athletics department increased alumni ticket prices by $4.\nDuring the September trustees meeting, Greenspan's presentation included statistics on how IU provides more basketball seats for students than any other Big Ten school and other major basketball universities.\nBut Shortle said such an assessment is not fair to the students.\n"Their argument has always been we have more student seats than any other Big Ten university, but we're all over the place," Shortle said. "It'd be nice if we had an actual student section. That would be a big step forward for the athletics department."\nStudents have sought the creation of a student section for years, Shortle said, adding that with the new scoreboard it would create a new atmosphere at Assembly Hall. \nOther Big Ten schools believe student sections help win games. \nJoel Rasmus, director of promotions and advertising for athletics at Purdue University, said Purdue has no limit on how many student season tickets they sell. \n"We've never turned down a student who's wanted to purchase a student season ticket," Rasmus said. But Purdue only sells about 3,500 student season tickets each year, and Rasmus admitted that if sales increased they would have to put a cap on season ticket sales. \nPurdue also has a student cheering section, called "The Paint Crew," which has replaced "The Gene Pool," named in honor of former Purdue coach Gene Keady.\nPurdue students who belong to "The Paint Crew" are seated before other students, and they receive a T-shirt and scouting reports from coaches via e-mail before each game. \n"Coach Keady said the Gene Pool gave them seven additional wins," Rasmus said. "I think a strong student section is good for one or two close wins." \nAt Michigan State, students have the "Izzone," a cheering section named in honor of coach Tom Izzo.\nThe "Izzone" comprises 3,000 seats.\n"The basketball team, you can see it in their performance with the students constantly standing on their feet, doing their choreographed cheers," said Garrett Larsen, marketing assistant for Michigan State athletics. "It's kind of like a mob mentality, everybody going insane."\nPete Rhoda, director of media relations for IU athletics, said he didn't know whether the department discussed adding a student section while creating the new budget plan.