Busted Brackets & UNO Hockey Price Hike

I'll admit it... I should have known better, but I figured that this Missouri team would be different.  All the "experts" thought they could go far in the tournament. And heck, if Missouri football could ever shake off the Pinkel Factor to be rated #1 in December, Missouri basketball could make a run.  So I went ahead and ran Missouri all the way to New Orleans.  Not winning there, of course... 

So while Missouri didn't play badly Friday, it seems...they just got outplayed by Norfolk State.  So boom goes my bracket.  So did a bunch of other people that had Missouri winning the whole thing.  So I won't throw my bracket in the trash just yet...who knows what is yet to come.

I'm always amused when I hear people talk about parking around Omaha's CenturyLink Center and TD Ameritrade Park.  "There's no parking down there!"  And once again, Omaha hosts a big event downtown with a sellout crowd ... and guess what.  The parking lots around the arena never filled up completely.  It was the same situation last year during the College World Series.  Lots never filled up, much to the chagrin of lot and garage owners that wanted to charge Rosenblatt prices when the supply of parking spaces was so much higher.

Now, will parking be an issue during the last week of June when the College World Series and Olympic Swim Trials are going on simultaneously?  Yeah...but when you've got upwards of 40,000 people attending events across the street from each other, that's to be expected.  That's the perfect once-in-a-lifetime coincedence.

Josh Jones got all ball?  Yeah right.
Photo courtesy RollBamaRoll.com

Well, I was wrong about Creighton... I thought they would get spanked by Alabama, but the Tide blew an 11 point lead as well as completely botched final few seconds.  I've watched replay after replay, and I have no idea how the refs didn't call a foul on that final shot.  But Creighton found a way to win once again...and you have to give the Jays credit for that.

When I got home last night, I found a renewal packet for UNO hockey tickets for next season.  The letter starts by expressing "appreciation" for my support by offering me the opportunity to renew my tickets at "last year's prices".

Except UNO won't renew my tickets.  They've decided to discontinue the "Red Army" ticket package...and so now not only do I need to find new seats, I'll have to pay an extra $26 per seat this season.

I'm not sure why UNO chose to discontinue the Red Army package.  They claim it's to "enhance the environment"...but UNO can't really drop the Hefty bag and cover the seats in the south end of the arena.  Blue Cross/Blue Shield probably won't appreciate their scoreboard ad being hidden.  So really, it comes down to a price increase for fans on the low end.  I guess their greasing the skids for the big price hike if UNO manages to build an undersized campus facility.

That's the part of this that really disappoints me.  I've long felt that UNO could market hockey and make it a big-time event in Omaha.  I get the feeling that UNO is giving up on that plan, and rather than trying to draw more people to UNO hockey, they just want to draw more money out of UNO's existing fans.

I'm not going to make a rash decision on this, but UNO is sure making it tough to be a season ticketholder.