THE ARIZONA STATE : TICKET MASTER : Official’s Rose Bowl Surcharge Will Earn $1 Million and Anger More Than a Few

To some, it is Tom Collins, not quarterback Jake Plummer, who is the real snake at Arizona State.

To others, Collins is an innovative financial genius who has done more for the Sun Devil program with a calculator in his hands than Plummer has done with a football.

Who is Collins and why is everybody talking about him?

He’s the Arizona State associate athletic director in charge of corporate and community affairs who has generated a $1-million bonus for his school by carving a new revenue stream out of an old, traditional game that has been around for nearly a century, making plenty of waves in the process.

With Arizona State playing in the Rose Bowl for only the second time in school history, Collins saw an opportunity to dramatically reduce the school’s $2.1-million athletic department deficit. He came up with the idea of tacking a $50 surcharge on 20,000 of the 36,416 game tickets allocated to the school at a face value of $75 each. That will come out to a $1-million profit, minus a small handling cost for each ticket.

Although the surcharge didn’t break any rules, it did break traditional policy for the Rose Bowl, a college-football institution since 1902.

Rose Bowl officials have said they will discuss Collins’ pricing plan after the game, with the expectation that the rules will be changed to prevent such a price increase in the future.

“We saw it as a unique way to raise dollars for our program,” Collins said.

Unquestionably unique. Although there are no records for the specific prices charged by participating schools over the years, no Rose Bowl official could recall a similar surcharge. The only surcharge Jack French, chief operating officer of the Rose Bowl Assn., could remember was $5 tacked onto tickets in the mid ‘80s to pay for seismic strengthening of the Rose Bowl stadium.

“We initially thought of requiring gifts or donations,” Collins said, “but we thought that would be unfair. Instead, we thought we would just call it a surcharge and put it on everybody’s bill.”

Not everybody’s bill. Careful not to appear to be gouging the school’s closest supporters and, in some cases, those least able to afford it, Arizona State officials exempted from the surcharge about 16,000 of the tickets allocated to the Sun Devils for their New Year’s Day appearance in Pasadena against Ohio State. Included in the exemption were tickets earmarked for students, faculty and campus groups such as the band.

The remaining 20,000 seats, with the surcharge added on, went to the general public and two booster organizations, the Sun Angel Foundation and the Sun Devil Club.

“We felt these are people who are used to paying premium prices for their seats,” Collins said.

He acknowledged that when some of those people got a look at their inflated bill, they “were upset, especially when they found out it [the surcharge] was not deductible. They thought it was unfair.”

Fair or not, they paid. Arizona State has sold all its seats for the game.

So how does that make the people in Columbus, Ohio, feel? Do Ohio State officials think they blew a golden opportunity by not adding a surcharge of their own?

“We certainly had no interest in doing anything like that,” said Paul Krebs, a senior associate athletic director at Ohio State. “We never even considered it. We already have established donor programs and institutional support.

“We didn’t feel that kind of surcharge would be well received by the fans. That is not the way we wanted to attempt to raise funds. Our main focus was, how do we want to distribute our tickets? What is the fairest way to do so? We wanted to reward those who supported our program and make sure they were not required to pay anything extra.

“That is not to be critical of Arizona State, but everybody has their own considerations.”

Officials at UCLA and USC, while saying they have never been tempted to add on such a surcharge, say the need for the higher price is because of a situation unique to a school like Arizona State.

“I understand why they did it,” UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dalis said. “They don’t have donor programs like other institutions do. Most schools give preferential seating for donations.”

Ron Orr, an associate athletic director at USC, agreed with Dalis.

“It’s a matter of whether they pay for it today or back in August with a donation,” Orr said.

Arizona State may be forced to look into some sort of donor program in the future because this window of opportunity for a Rose Bowl surcharge may be shut as quickly as it was opened.

“My guess is that someone will close that loophole in the future,” Collins said.

French said the matter will be looked at by the triumvirate that runs the annual game, consisting of the Rose Bowl committee and officials from both the Pacific 10 and Big Ten conferences.

“There has been some concern expressed,” French said of the surcharge. “But Arizona State was up front about it. They said they put a surcharge on it because they didn’t have a vehicle for donations.

“We will certainly put it on the agenda to discuss. We understand that universities need to raise money. But whatever they do, there should be some universality.”

One of the problems with the Arizona State plan is that it goes against a policy of revenue-sharing among conference teams. Each of the Pac-10 schools, including the Sun Devils, will receive $718,000 from this year’s Rose Bowl. Now suddenly, the Sun Devils have their own revenue stream outside the mainstream.

Also, what about the people who wind up side by side in the same section of the stadium, one having paid $50 more than the other because one buyer was unfortunate enough to get one of the 20,000 surcharge-added tickets?

“I think there is some concern that a precedent has been set,” Krebs said.

Three years ago, there was a Rose Bowl controversy of a different nature when an unusually high demand for tickets from the Wisconsin area, because of the first appearance of the Badgers in Pasadena on New Year’s Day in 31 years, created a shortage of tickets among those who had been promised them through tour packages.

“It does raise some questions that have to be addressed,” said Pac-10 spokesman Jim Muldoon. “We have revenue sharing in this conference. We’re kind of Communistic. And now we have revenue outside of that which is shared by the other teams. Should that be allowed?

“One thing that hasn’t even been mentioned is whether the tickets are underpriced to start with. If people are willing to pay that surcharge, maybe they are.”