Skins Tix Brokers Get Chop Blocked by Team

Yeah, sure. It's a season ticket "waiting list."

Riiiiiigggghhhht.

If you needed one more debunking narrative as to how totally-not-at-all-hard it is anymore to get a ticket to see the Skins play at FedEx Field, then this brilliant piece by the Washington Post should do it.

Apparently, the debacle of the Steeler game last year on national TV (MNF) in which Steeler fans were a seeming 50-50 split with the home crowd, pushed Dan Snyder over the edge and caused him to move on cancelling various ticket broker accounts with the team.

And look, I know that every team probably does this, to some extent, and in some way. And look, I know that they are running a business.

But let's just stop once and for all with the nonsense of a "list" that encompasses 160,000 supposedly willing and able ticket buyers.

It's a burgundy and gold striped unicorn, in my book. A wonderful thought, but something that doesn't really exist.

There MIGHT be 16,000 people ready and willing to buy tickets, but even that might be a stretch.

(NOTE: Be sure to chortle at the passage in the story about the actual list, printed out, sitting in 16 huge boxes and binders in a "locked" closet. Now there's an efficient way to store data in the year 2009, huh?)

See, the problem is simple: There are roughly 40,000 seats in that building which are good seats, at a price people want. We're talking the lower bowl regular season tickets that cost $99 per game.

The rest of the seats, virtually nobody wants.

Club seats at up to $475 per game ++ (parking, etc.) are chronically undersold and underused. (See: wide swaths of yellow during games)

The upper bowl (Siberia) is only used as a "feeder" or "farm system" to tempt fans into thinking they'll get called down to the lower bowl after X number of years up there. Not unlike infamous announcer Rod Roddy on "The Price is Right" screaming "come on down....!"

So by my calculations (and others here in the office) there's about 60-75,000 seats that are not exempt from the "luxury" category that prevents Skins games from falling victim to blackout rules.

How close are we, to that threshold?

Nobody knows for sure. But I think we are closer than anybody realizes, and I think the day is coming soon, when we are all going to be in for the shock of our generation.

A road trip to Harrisburg, PA to watch the Skins at home. Just like the bad ol' days of the early 70's.