Next Step: Winning the Ticket Bowl

As dawn broke Tuesday, a purple haze descended upon the land.

A singular opportunity was at hand: tickets for the Northwestern Wildcats’ first Rose Bowl appearance in 47 years were for sale. For the first time, Ticketmaster was offering ducats to the public. Two per call. Total of four. Face value, of course, $75, plus a $4.50 service charge per ticket and a $10 Federal Express fee per order.

The only catch--sale time on the West Coast kicked off at 6 a.m.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And so, like many other loyal Northwestern alums still scrambling for tickets, I steeled myself to do early morning battle.

Any Rose Bowl ticket--even in the end zone or the top row of the Pasadena stadium--would be a prize. The pent-up demand is enormous because Northwestern hasn’t been to any bowl since 1949. Compounding the situation, the school was only allotted 21,904 of the bowl’s 98,245 tickets.

So far, there has been no evidence of the sort of scams that erupted when Wisconsin visited the Rose Bowl two years ago, when the demand for tickets was even more intense. Even so, a friend in Chicago says it’s no problem to sell this year’s Rose Bowl tickets there for up to $1,000.

At Northwestern, we were taught to be resourceful. As a graduate of the Class of 1980, I figured I’d trim the odds to score through Ticketmaster. I called my younger brother Stuart (Class of ‘87) in Monterey and my mom, Sandra (Class of ‘56), in San Diego. Each volunteered to join the dawn patrol.

To get in the spirit, I laid out my faded Northwestern football sweatshirt, my Wildcat hat and my secret weapon: my lucky purple boxer shorts. The only time the Wildcats lost this year, 30-28 to Miami of Ohio, I had neglected to wear the boxers. There would be no such errors Tuesday.

This, then, is what transpired:

5:58 a.m.: Uncertain whether my watch is in sync with the Ticketmaster clocks, I dial the agency’s Los Angeles number: (213) 480-3232. I feel like I’m cheating because my watch says it’s two minutes early. Apparently thousands of other Northwestern alums nationwide are also seeking a two-minute advantage: “We’re sorry,” the phone company interjects. “All circuits are busy now.”

6:00: It’s later, so I try my call again. Circuits are busy.

6:00:50: The phone rings. “Yo,” says my brother the Navy aviator, the razor-sharp combat veteran who is due to graduate this week from the U.S. Navy’s Postgraduate School with a degree in space systems engineering. “It’s (213) 480-3732?”

“It’s (213) 480-3232,” I reply.

“Oh. I couldn’t read my writing,” he says. My brother, the rocket scientist.

6:01: Circuits busy.

6:02:03: I decide to give the redial button a workout. It takes 10 seconds to make a call, get told the circuits are busy, hang up and do it all again. Six dials in a minute, six “circuits busy.”

6:05: Circuits busy.

6:11: Mom calls. She’s been trying Ticketmaster’s Orange County line. “I got through,” she says. “But that was at 5:55 a.m., and all I got was a recording saying they normally opened for business at 9 a.m. I’ll try a few more times, then give it up.”

6:18: Circuits still busy. Stuart calls again, announcing that he is going back to sleep.

6:36: Circuits busy.

6:52: I attempt to change my daughter’s diaper while nestling the phone between my left ear and shoulder. The phone clatters to the floor. Kayla, scared by the noise, whimpers and cries. I make a mental note: To avoid this from happening again, be sure that Kayla is potty trained in time for Northwestern’s return trip to the 1997 Rose Bowl.

7:16: Remarkably, circuits are busy. Sifting through the previous day’s mail, I see that it includes a brochure offering me a gold medallion commemorating the ‘Cats Big Ten championship for $850.

7:40: I get through! And am promptly rewarded with this recorded message: “Thank you for calling. Please hold and your call will be answered in the order received. There are currently no more seats available for the Rose Bowl.”

Later Tuesday, Tom Hogg, Ticketmaster’s vice president of operations, reports that the agency sold its allotment of 1,500 tickets in 85 minutes. Ticketmaster laid on 100 extra operators.

So, as Tuesday drew to a close, I was still without tickets.

But I remain confident that I will be on hand to see the Wildcats in their purple and black jerseys storm the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day and whip USC. Not taking any chances, I’ll be sporting my purple boxers.