Season ticket sales for University of Louisville football have eclipsed 31,000 for the upcoming season, according to Courier-Journal columnist Eric Crawford.
That’s a significant increase from a couple of months ago when U of L indicated it was 6,000 short of reaching 33,000 in sales, which have been achieved the last eight seasons.
Meanwhile, officials at the University of Cincinnati, which went to the Orange Bowl last season, are excited that UC has sold 12,784 season tickets for the 2009 football season, an 8.3 percent increase over last year’s 11,795. Athletic Director Mike Waddell told a Cincinnati blog:
“I think in this economy, for us to be up shows a great deal about where our program is, especially in this climate where so many schools across the nation are having difficulty maintaining the status quo. It’s a direct result of a lot of hard work by our coaches getting out in the community. Whenever you’re winning on the field, people want to be part of the process. We were Cincinnati’s championship team last year. People want to be associated with a champion.â€
Obviously, a matter of perspective.
Cincy, of course competes against the Bengals and Reds for fan support. We basically compete against ourselves. Nippert Stadium is plagued with very little parking in the area around the stadium.
This number of season tickets is encouraging, though, to the UofL fans that will want to travel to see us play UC up there on Oct. 24th. If we’re over or at .500 at that point…and I see a good chance we could be 3-3 by then,
the Cards fans have proven in the past that we’ll travel for that game. We’ve beaten them the last three times we have played them up there.
If we’re only competing against ourselves, why are there so many blue and white freekos around town?
UK does not call Louisville their home or play all their home games in Louisville like the Reds, Bengals and Bearcats do in Cincy. As far as the blue and white freekos go, they’ve never made a significant impact on the season ticket sales of Louisville football games.