Badgers Came as Fans, Leave as Litigants

You had all kinds of ticketless Wisconsin stalwarts outside the Rose Bowl on Saturday: those who got lucky, those who paid up and those who slinked off to a big-screen sports bar somewhere.

There were even a few who vowed to wait until the game ended so they could sneak in to watch the Badger band give its traditional “5th quarter” performance.

They had one thing in common, however, besides their jaunty red and white outfits: Just about everybody was as mad as a rabid badger.

Jerry Heitzinger was one of the angriest. He was the one walking around the parking lot with the sign proclaiming: “The Granddaddy of Them All--Greed.”

Like thousands of Wisconsin fans left without tickets by the overselling of the 80th Rose Bowl game, Heitzinger arrived in Southern California a football fan but is leaving a litigant.

Heitzinger, who owns an electronics store in Racine, has organized 27 couples to sue Last Chance Travel of Mt. Joy, Pa., which he said failed to deliver tickets that had been the central component of a $900 three-day tour package that brought them here.

“They lied to us all week at our hotel in Anaheim,” Heitzinger said. “At 5 a.m. today when we got on the bus to come up to the Rose Parade, they told us they had no tickets for us. When we arrived in Pasadena, a scalper got on the bus and told us he wanted $250 each for tickets. He knew just where we would be.”

No one could be reached for comment Saturday at Last Chance.

Hours later, Heitzinger and his wife, Linda, grudgingly paid $100 each for two 70th row, end-zone seats, with a face value of $46 apiece.

Other Badger faithful bit the bullet and paid more. Many coughed up $200 a seat and some shelled out up to $400. In California, it is a misdemeanor to scalp tickets on the grounds of a stadium without permission. Still, hundreds of such sales were openly consummated.

But despite the anger and near-desperation of many Badger fans, scalpers were not always able to command outrageous prices.

When a budding entrepreneur offered Ann and Carl Peters of Green Bay tickets at $250 a pop, she snapped at him and offered a lecture worthy of the ones her minister husband delivers from his pulpit.

“I may be stubborn, but it’s matter of right and wrong,” she declared. “I’m not paying scalper’s prices.”

By kickoff time, however, there were a few happy endings. Consider Ken Siedenburg of Milwaukee, who arrived at the Rose Bowl with seven friends, displaying a homemade sign headlined “The Hose Bowl,” which excoriated three travel agencies that allegedly stiffed him and his pals.

“People dropped out of heaven on us,” bestowing one free ticket and six others at or near face value, Siedenburg said.

Nonetheless, well after kickoff, there were still hundreds of Wisconsin fans plaintively pacing outside the stadium, holding up one, two, three or four fingers, indicating the number of tickets they needed. “I’ll give you two for $300,” whispered one scalper.

“No more than $100 each,” said Mike Finley, an assistant district attorney from Madison. He pointed to his small portable television and said: “I’m going to see the game whether I go in or not.”

But Wendy Segal really needed to get into that stadium. She had bought three tickets from a New Jersey ticket broker for $225 apiece two weeks ago. On Friday afternoon, she was told it would be $650 apiece or nothing.

As Wisconsin was about to score its first touchdown, she was still searching for that rare commodity, a scalper with a conscience, while lamenting: “My son Scott is in there playing the trumpet for Wisconsin and I’m out here.”