Pac-10 Picking Pockets; Yeah, That’s the Ticket

Welcome to the Rip-Off 10 Tournament at Staples Center.

Bring your money, park, eat, buy a program, stay for one game--stay for all seven, it doesn’t matter to the folks at the Rip-Off 10 once they get you here.

You say you want to go to only the UCLA game? Well, the only way you can get into the building is to pay $160 or $135 for a ticket to all seven tournament games to be played here over the next three days.

You say you’re not interested in the other six games, because we’re talking UCLA here and the Bruins might very well be one and done, that will still be $160 or $135, and thanks for the Rip-Off 10 donation?

You say you’re a student, who paid $7 to watch the Bruins play in Pauley Pavilion and you were there for the guys through every turnover against Pepperdine and Arizona State, and now you want to watch Steve Lavin coach at Staples Center in case he never gets another chance, maybe even paint your face and wave to Mom and Dad on TV the way you see other college kids do? Then you better also make up a sign: “Mom-Dad, I’m $135 in the hole.”

There are no student discounts for the Rip-Off 10, no single-game tickets on sale for the Rip-Off 10, and after tickets were distributed to the conference’s schools, there remain about 1,000 ticket packages for the general public--at $135 each--in the upper reaches of Staples Center.

“Even Shaq would look like an ant from up there--a big ant, but an ant, nonetheless,” said Colin Kingston, who called himself “a suffering Bruin fan,” in an e-mail to express his unhappiness at being unable to buy a single-game ticket to watch UCLA. “What I want to know is, who has the time or interest in attending all seven games? I’d sure like to know if it was officials from the Pac-10 or officials from Staples who decided to get greedy.”

A spokesman for Staples Center said, “Ticket policies are set by the event organizers,” making it clear it’s the Pac-10 that’s greedy.

Who chose not to have a student discount? I asked, and the spokesman said, “That was a Pac-10 decision.”

That’s the Rip-Off 10, staging this student-athlete event but making no economic allowances for student-grunts to enjoy a memorable college experience.

“We’re just doing what everyone else is doing, and what they do in the NCAA tournament,” Rip-Off 10 assistant commissioner Jim Muldoon said.

Correction: A spokesman for UCLA said that in the NCAA tournament students buy tickets for the session in which their team competes, and their places are taken by students from another school in the next session. The losers go home, without paying for tickets they didn’t use, while the winners then occupy the seats for the championship session.

Correction: The Big West tournament at the Anaheim Convention Center sells tickets on an individual-game basis, and it has $7 student tickets.

Correction: The Mountain West tournament in Las Vegas has single-session tickets, and a $15 student discount ticket.

“I can give people advice on how to get single-game tickets,” Muldoon said. “It happens in the NCAA tournament, teams lose and people walk out of the arena and sell their tickets to the remaining games. There are ways to get tickets.”

I applaud the Rip-Off 10’s willingness to teach scalping techniques, and look forward to Muldoon’s seminars, although I should probably point out that the small print on the back of each ticket indicates it’s against city law here to resell a ticket to anyone--even at a discount price. That suggests a sign of a different sort: “Mom-Dad, please send bail money.”

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THE RIP-OFF 10, which is paying for transportation and hotel and giving players $50 a day for food, expects to divide more than $2.5 million in profit among its 10 schools. Many of the sportswriters covering the tournament accepted very nice media gifts from the conference, or the haul might have been bigger.

“We’re selling this as an event, not as a single game,” Muldoon said, and they’ve made that clear. “If there are any ticket packages unsold [as of today], we’ll break them down and sell them as single [session] tickets.”

Why didn’t they say that in the first place?

“I asked, and was told, ‘no,’” wrote Kingston. “Either the lady at Staples was incompetent or directed not to inform callers in an attempt to boost sales of the $135 ticket packages. I have no assurances tickets will be available, so I won’t even attempt to drive there, and I’m not going to pay for games I don’t plan on watching.”

As long as there are 17,000 suckers willing to spend money for games they’re not going to attend, the Rip-Off 10 is in command. The last time they tried to conduct one of these Pac-10 tournaments, however, they failed to gain fan support and after four years disappeared. “We never lost money on one of them,” chimed in Muldoon.

They probably didn’t give the media nice gifts in those days.

“I don’t feel we’re ripping people off whatsoever,” Muldoon said. “I think this is one of the great bargains there are in sports.”

I have no doubt the Rip-Off 10 is convinced of that.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from Bradley Hutchins:

“They were discussing the upcoming celebrity boxing matches on Fox the other day on TV and Channel 4’s Carlos Del Valle suggested you going up against Mike Garrett. Any chance of seeing this?”

I’ve put on some pounds recently, so I believe we’re in different divisions. If I’m not mistaken, Garrett’s still a lightweight.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.