jammsb
07-22-2010, 05:41 AM
I know that most anything praiseworthy about UNC basketball is usually unwelcome on this forum. Generally speaking I feel that way myself. However after a few years stewing about whether I should tell my story on this site, I decided to do so.
I have a good friend who is a big Tar Heel fan, not as big a fan as I am of Duke, but a strong UNC fan nevertheless.
One year he suggested that we attend a UNC-Duke game together. I asked how would we get tickets. Knowing that UNC at Duke is perhaps the most difficult ticket in all of sports, he decided to focus his efforts on a game at the Dean Dome. He told me that he had the tickets. He lives in New York. I live in Pennsylvania. We met in Raleigh and spent the day spending hundreds of dollars buying souvenirs and clothing - first at the Duke bookstore and then at the one in Chapel Hill. We went to the game early wanting to soak up the special ambience. After spending about half an hour walking around the arena, we decided to check out our seats. We were shocked and thrilled to see that we were a couple of rows up from the Duke bench. No sooner had we sat down than we were surrounded by about a dozen security people. It turned out that the tickets we had were meant for the president of Duke University. Apparently they had been fedexed to Duke, but had been stolen in transit. My buddy had bought them from a ticket broker in Atlanta. He probably paid many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for them. We were brought to a small room where we were grilled and not quite threatened, but certainly not initially treated kindly. We told them our story. After about half an hour of questioning, they believed us and became sympathetic to our situation. Not only weren't we arrested or even thrown out, but we were also given two very good seats free of charge to the game. They were not quite as good as the President's seats, but they were pretty darn good. I doubt that this would have happened in any other arena in America. In Madison Square Garden we would have been lucky to not have been arrested.
The icing on the cake was that Duke won the game.
I have a good friend who is a big Tar Heel fan, not as big a fan as I am of Duke, but a strong UNC fan nevertheless.
One year he suggested that we attend a UNC-Duke game together. I asked how would we get tickets. Knowing that UNC at Duke is perhaps the most difficult ticket in all of sports, he decided to focus his efforts on a game at the Dean Dome. He told me that he had the tickets. He lives in New York. I live in Pennsylvania. We met in Raleigh and spent the day spending hundreds of dollars buying souvenirs and clothing - first at the Duke bookstore and then at the one in Chapel Hill. We went to the game early wanting to soak up the special ambience. After spending about half an hour walking around the arena, we decided to check out our seats. We were shocked and thrilled to see that we were a couple of rows up from the Duke bench. No sooner had we sat down than we were surrounded by about a dozen security people. It turned out that the tickets we had were meant for the president of Duke University. Apparently they had been fedexed to Duke, but had been stolen in transit. My buddy had bought them from a ticket broker in Atlanta. He probably paid many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for them. We were brought to a small room where we were grilled and not quite threatened, but certainly not initially treated kindly. We told them our story. After about half an hour of questioning, they believed us and became sympathetic to our situation. Not only weren't we arrested or even thrown out, but we were also given two very good seats free of charge to the game. They were not quite as good as the President's seats, but they were pretty darn good. I doubt that this would have happened in any other arena in America. In Madison Square Garden we would have been lucky to not have been arrested.
The icing on the cake was that Duke won the game.