Moving on (down)

Introducing the "move-down plan":

Athletic director Greg McGarity called it a “move-down plan,” which will allow fans a chance some time during the first half of games to fill seats closer to the Stegeman Coliseum court where there are no-shows from season ticket holders.

The goal is obviously to fill that lower bowl as often as possible.  My previous suggestion had been to do general admission for all non-conference games.  McGarity has chosen to go in a different direction.

I am willing to keep an open mind here, but I do have a couple of concerns:

1. You risk creating a mad rush down to the lower bowl.  It may not sound like much, but 750 people descending all at once could create a bit of a mess.  Part of the reason the general admission worked so well is because people's arrivals are staggered by nature.  Now, you may have 10 people eying the same seat on the way down.  Which leads to...
2. You risk forcing people into a walk of shame, of sorts.  Imagine the family of 5 that gets down only to find that the seats they were after are taken.  Now you have 5 frustrated fans headed back upstairs.
3. You risk distracting from the game.  Media timeouts tend to last right around 2 minutes, 30 seconds.  That is not a lot of time for hundreds of people to get up, gather their stuff, find the right block of seats, and get settled again.  That's ignoring the folks who fail and have to find new seats up top.  People who are moving around are not paying attention to the game, so you could have a couple weird minutes where only half the arena is tuned in.
4. You guarantee some poor schmuck is going to come back from the bathroom and find someone in his seat. That is what ushers are for, but it's still annoying.

Will it work?  Maybe.  The ushers will have to be on their game, that's for sure.  I'm for anything that gets people closer to the court, so it's worth a shot.  There may just be a learning curve for everyone involved during the first few games.

And, of course, we all hope this becomes moot anyway.  If there aren't any open seats, there's no need to move around, right?

h/t Online Athens