The line: October 22nd

In a departure from recent years, there will no longer be a "line announcement" where students have to drop whatever they are doing and run to the designated location to sign up just to participate in the line.

Instead, Penn Athletics is currently advertising the Oct. 22 event. Students need simply show up at the Palestra and spend the night to get their student-section season tickets.

Tickets this year will be $50 and line participants will get a few benefits throughout the season, including

Priority seating before tip-off (unlike years past, non-line participants will eventually be allowed to move down if there are available seats in the lower sections)
Free popcorn at a game to be determined
Exclusive food and merchandise deals at select games
Access to guest passes for each game
a 20% discount on the PSN streaming annual package
Eligibility to get post-season tickets if Penn plays in the NCAA tournament
and more

Doing away with the line-announcement is a great idea. Making student tickets hard to get by having the spontaneous announcement was not helping student attendance whatsoever. Any exclusivity it created was far outweighed by the fact that most students simply have no idea about the line announcement.

Opening up the student section to non-line participants once the game has started is also a wise move. The policy of keeping students in the upper bowl while a dwindling number of line-participants sat alone in the lower section was never a good one. The guest passes should help increase attendance, though I wonder how utilized they will actually be.

Many of these benefits, however, are rather petty. %15 off merchandise? A free popcorn? $1 hot dogs to students who arrive an hour early? How will these chump-change offers attract students? Worst of all, the discount on the Penn Sports Network package is an incentive not to walk down to 33rd street in February to catch a game if you can just stream it on your computer.

On the whole, though, I think these are positive changes that should bring more students to the Palestra.

We'll see next Friday how successful they really are. Until then, as T.O. says, get your popcorn ready.