Season Tickets: The Dilemma Of The Die-Hard Fan

When I was 20 years old I decided for fun to put my name on the Giants' season ticket waiting list. It was partially serious and partially a lark, but given that my number on the list generally hovered between 90,000 and 86,000, which would require an entire stadium's worth of fans to die off or give up their tickets for my turn to present itself, I assumed I wouldn't be getting the opportunity to buy season tickets for 20 years or so. This in turn prompted my father to ask if he could go to some games with me because, in his words, "I plan on still being pretty lucid."

He'll be 74, so I imagine he will, in fact, be lucid, but something funny happened on the way to my 40th birthday.

When the Giants moved into their new stadium this past season, not only was there an increased capacity, but a few bizarre quirks changed the game. For one, the Giants and Jets, not anticipating such extensive financial fallout, raised prices just a bit too high for the vast majority of their demand. As well, the scourge of NFL fans known as personal seat licenses wreaked havoc on the Big Blue fan base. By charging PSLs that were as high as $20,000 in some places, the average fan and many families that had been season ticket holders for years were priced out of being able to see their team every Sunday.

Now, while I can understand their frustration, the theory behind PSLs doesn't really bother me because it shifts the cost of a stadium to the people who will actually attend games in it rather than the average taxpayer who has no interest in going to a game. But more importantly, the PSLs and the other factors I mentioned previously opened a gaping hole in the waiting list, and by the start of the 2010 NFL season, I got a phone call from the Giants ticket office that was about 15 years earlier than I expected.

My number was up. I had the chance to buy season tickets.

Here's where it gets interesting, however. For one, I enjoy going to one or two games a year, but eight? Or realistically since you're required to buy preseason games at full price, 10? For another, the only remaining seats in the standing were far out of my price range. They were club seats that would cost $400 each per game and each seat had a PSL that was valued at -- wait for it -- $7,500.

So if I wanted to buy Giants season tickets when my number came up, the total first year cost (note: PSLs can have their costs spread out with longterm payment plans) would have been $23,000. That was not a price I had interest in paying.

So imagine my surprise when the Giants came calling again this morning to offer me season tickets, which I was quick to dismiss until they told me the choices had gotten cheaper. Of course, the word "cheap" is relative, but in this case, compared to the first chance I had it certainly was. The cheapest seats available ran at $120 -- I paid $150 to attend the Giants' first ever game at the New Meadowlands Stadium -- and PSLs would be $4,000 per seat, nearly half the cost of the previous tickets.

Herein lies the dilemma. Being able to call myself a Giants season ticket holder is something I have wanted for years, but is the cost enough to justify it? And moreover, if I'm not going to attend the games, the obvious choice, to not purchase tickets at all or to sell them at a markup and hope to recoup the cost of the PSLs through those means an enormous amount of work, or a leap of faith at any rate.

Throw this in with the fact that PSLs are available for far cheaper on the Giants' PSL exchange site -- albeit for much worse seats -- and things get more complicated.

Clearly, there is much to consider for anyone who has the chance to buy some, and I'm personally grappling with the realities right now. In the end, with logic dictating, I will probably not buy tickets at all, but that doesn't mean I won't be thinking long and hard about it over the next few days, and I will probably be placing a call to the Giants' ticket office in the morning to get a sense of what my options would be.

If I get too crazy, it may not be the last call I make to them.

Anyone Notice That The Devils Are Kind Of Really Good Right Now?

I am faced with a massive quandary as a Devils fan right now. In what has been a trying season -- New Jersey has spent most of the season with the League's worst record -- my team is suddenly hot as a pistol and making a wild, bizarre run at the final playoff spot in the East. That playoff spot is still a far, far ways off, but it's an awful lot closer than it used to be. Last night, New Jersey trailed in the third period in Toronto before Ilya Kovalchuk pushed himself end-to-end and fired a game-winner past James Reimer in the waning seconds of overtime.

And just like that the deficit was down to 13.

Now that may not seem like the most exciting revelation. After all, New Jersey is still third to last in the Eastern conference. But that 13-point deficit was 24 points not so long ago, and with 27 games remaining there is ample time for that deficit to start dropping bit by bit. In fact, that win over Toronto Thursday night has pushed New Jersey's mark to 11-1-2 in its last 14 games, which easily makes them the hottest team in the League at the moment. Thursday night was the Devils' second consecutive overtime victory after defeating the Hurricanes in OT Tuesday at The Rock -- a game I was actually in attendance for -- and it now may have the New Jersey building the adequate momentum to make a serious run at the final postseason seed.

The win in Toronto also put coach Jacques Lemaire in the 600-win club, a feat that was written up by some anonymous lackey at NHL.com.

Lemaire's accomplishments are a pivotal part of the story, of course. The man who led the Devils to their first Stanley Cup Championship in 1995, has showed a remarkable ability to get the most out of his teams -- as he did with the Devils a season ago in what was expected to be a one-season return to the Garden State before moving on into retirement. What he has done so far this season, however, may eclipse anything else he's done. New Jersey was 9-22-2 when Lemaire was brought in to replace company man John MacLean on Dec. 23. At that point the idea of a playoff run was well off the team's radar -- and in likelihood it still is. Instead for the Lemaire, the challenge was to remind the players that not only were they professionals, but they were expected to be Stanley Cup contenders when the season began.

Rediscovering the Devils' confidence under Lemaire has been a rough process -- New Jersey went 1-7-0 in its first eight games following the coaching change, culminating in a home-and-home sweep at the hands of the hated Flyers. Since then, there has been a change, however. And the results have been staggering.



New Jersey was 27 points behind eighth-place Montreal on Jan. 9. In 14 games, the deficit has been halved.

With 27 games remaining there is certainly time for the Devils to get closer and closer, and while they would likely have to continue playing at the same remarkable pace of the past month, fans like myself have slowly started to believe that anything is possible. So why not?

Well, probability is one reason to believe why not. Cool Standings as of today still lists the Devils' chances of making the postseason this year at less than .1%, and I generally find a reliance on numbers and statistics to be the likely outcome in the long run. But without knowing the actual math they use, I'm not sure they can account for intangibles like momentum, but I can also attest, mathematically speaking, to a belief in regression to the mean and the law of larger numbers. All season long the Devils have been playing beneath their expectations and their talent level, but the larger the sample size -- in this case, 82 games -- the more likely the Devils' final record should approach their expected performance this season.

Now the Devils were expected to compete for a division title against the likes of defending-Eastern Conference Champion Philadelphia and 2009 Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh. While the chances of winding up in that race are just about nil, sneaking into the postseason with the final seed, if this team continues to return to its expected level performance over the long haul, certainly doesn't seem all that outlandish to me.

So that aforementioned quandary is this. Do I lament the likely loss of the Devils first potential top-five draft pick in decades, which could be used to patch a number of holes? Or do I get behind the improbable comeback?

Is it likely? Probably not. In fact, earlier this week I decided that I would wait until New Jersey had closed the gap to 10 points, and that it would have to happen by the 61st game of the season, before I fully invested myself emotionally in the prospect of the Devils making a stunning and unlikely playoff run. But with five games and only three points to go before that threshold, I'm starting to believe. It's only been a month of this season that the team has actually shown any signs of life, but now they're as lively as can be. And if they knock off the hottest team in the West in Newark tonight, (though I should note tonight's Chicago-Dallas game is also pretty intriguing as this preview attests) things could really get interesting.

And then I'd really start to believe that it's possible. In the end, short of a Championship, believing, in any season, is all you can really hope for.

Let's Kill Some Time

I don't have much interesting stuff to tell you all today, though I'm planning on posting a story tomorrow, so hopefully that will keep all of you interested.

In the meantime, I wrote another preview, which I'm much happier with than the last one. As well, my friend Crystal turned me on to America Bowl, a dedicated analysis of every President and every Super Bowl. If you love football and happen to fancy yourself a history nerd, it's worth a light-hearted gander.

I'll have something actually worth reading for you all tomorrow.

Some Vague Updates

I don't have much to tell you all about today. Well, I could post another story, but I figure I'll give it a few days before I do that.

Meanwhilst, I figured I'd post a preview I wrote that's online today. I'm pretty sure it's not one of my better ones, but I can handle that for now. Go nuts.

Also, I appreciate the large swath of invitations I've suddenly gotten from people to go see their favorite teams in different places. The couches, I assure you, are greatly appreciated. One of these people, Jeff Goldberg, is determined to, at some point, pull me in for a trip to see his Carolina Panthers. We'll get there when the schedule works out, and speaking of schedules, Jeff happens to have turned me on to this site, which will be dramatically helpful for future planning, assuming the NFL continues it's schedule on the same rotation that it has been doing for the past eight years.

Given that there has been no expansion or realignment, this would seem a safe assumption.

I'm sure there are a slew of these around the web, but if I'm going to base most of this on following the Giants around, this could be extremely useful for knocking out the 20-some NFL teams I've got remaining...