Kansas' new ticket plan irks longtime followers

TOPEKA, Kan. -- The day Allen Fieldhouse opened in 1955, Max and Jackie Kennedy took front-row seats and cheered their Jayhawks.

The young couple kept renewing their season tickets for those same prime seats year after year. Almost half a century flowed by. They built a deep love and an abiding loyalty for the school that would eventually grant degrees to both their sons and daughters-in-law.

Max, a football letterman at Kansas in the 1940s, served as the Jayhawks' golf coach for three years. And he served for free. The athletic department was strapped for funds in those days.

Max is gone now. He died after a fall last year.

And if Jackie doesn't write the university a check for $58,500, the seats she and Max shared for all those years will belong to someone who gives the school a big donation.

Whether Jackie is unable or unwilling to pony up the extra money does not matter.

Under the new "points system" Kansas is putting in place to raise new revenue, Max's widow -- unless she pays up -- will be moved to nearly the top row of the historic old building that holds so many cherished memories at courtside.

"I sat in those front row seats with my husband for 50 years," said Kennedy, 74. "The hardest thing I had to do was walk in that field house without him. I'm not sitting anywhere else."

She says she's not paying the $58,500 either.

"I think it's blackmail," she said. "It's just unbelievable to me that this is happening."

Actually, it's happening in many places. In the Big 12 alone, similar what-have-you-done-for-me-lately programs are in place at Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Missouri and Kansas State.

When Missouri began assigning seats in its new basketball arena this spring, it used a point system based on past donations to decide who got first choice. Then just to buy season tickets, fans had to make contributions of $250 to $1,000 and commit to making annual donations after that.

For Kansas, points are mainly based on donations to the Williams Fund, the revenue-raising arm of the athletic department. People also get points for such things as having football tickets, being a Kansas graduate and being a longtime ticket holder at Allen.

Get enough points and you get your choice of the best seats. It's almost all tied to donations.

Not every Allen Fieldhouse ticket-holder is unhappy. Many people who sit up high and have been making big donations are looking forward to being closer to the action.

"We have probably some of the worst seats in the house," said Janis Holiwell, of Topeka.

"We've been making donations every year, and they're not small donations. Other people are not. I know they've sat there a long time. But we pay the same amount of money and we sit in very poor seats."

About 9,000 seats in Allen, which holds about 16,300, are in question. The rest are reserved for faculty, staff and students.