Jackie Kennedy has fallen out of love with Kansas University.
“My husband played football for KU. He coached golf at KU for three years; he did it for free because they didn’t have any money. Our two sons went to KU. I have a daughter-in-law who went to KU, and I have a grandson at KU now,” she said. “I have another grandson who’s thinking about coming to KU, but I’m discouraging him.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s the way I feel.”
Kennedy, who’s 74, and her husband, Max, who died last year, have had front-row season tickets to KU men’s basketball games for nearly 50 years.
Now she’s ready to give them up, as are many other longtime season-ticket holders.
Last week, Kennedy learned that under a new priority point system she would have to donate $58,500 to have a shot at holding onto her seats for next season.
Under the new system, those with the most points will be assigned the best seats.
“I can’t afford $5,000, much less $58,500,” Kennedy said. “But you know what? If I had $10 million, I wouldn’t do it. To me, this is extortion.”
No one knows how many longtime season-ticket holders, especially those in prime seats, plan on giving up their seats. But it’s clear, said KU Associate Athletic Director Jim Marchiony, that while fans like Kennedy won’t have enough points to sit in the on-the-floor sections, hundreds of others do.
In fact, enough season-ticket holders already have more than the 809 to 1,944 points required to sit in sections bordering the floor.
“The flip side to all this is that there are fans who’ve been sitting in higher-up seats for years, who are just as loyal and who have given, and who continue to give, more to the athletic department,” Marchiony said.
Loyalties being equal, he said, it’s only fair that those who donate more sit in the better seats.
“I don’t mean this in a harsh way because everybody here appreciates the fact that so many people have been loyal fans for so long. They’ve made KU basketball what it is,” Marchiony said. “But we’ve reached a point where it’s someone else’s turn to sit in those seats.”
Paul Kincaid, 83, doesn’t like it, but agreed it was time for someone else to sit in the four front-row seats for which he’s had season tickets for more than 40 years.
“Wilt Chamberlain, Gayle Sayers and Jo Jo White … they were all patients of mine. In fact, my wife and I are Jo Jo’s daughter Meka’s godparents,” said Kincaid, a semiretired dentist in Lawrence.
“(Former KU basketball coach) Dick Harp was a lifelong patient of mine, too. He got us our tickets,” Kincaid said. “Where I sit, you can just about touch (TV announcer) Dick Vitale.”
But to keep just two of his four seats, Kincaid figured he would have to put up at least $174,000.
“We’re giving them up,” he said, pausing. “We love KU, but this whole thing has left us feeling kind of violated.”
The Kincaids and Kennedy have 203 and 224 points, respectively. To continue sitting on the front row, Kennedy needs at least 809 points; the Kincaids, whose seats are center court, need at least 1,944 points.
Under the formula, fans in the Kincaids’ and Kennedy’s situation receive one point for every $100 donated to the Williams Educational Fund, the athletic department’s fund-raising arm.
“They told me I can still get tickets — in section 15A. That’s clear up at the top,” Kennedy said. “They said I could see the whole court from there. And I said, ‘Yeah, but the players will look like ants.’ After 50 years on the front row, I’m not going to do it.”
Kennedy and her husband had their tickets since the fieldhouse opened. “We had tickets to the games when they were in Hoch Auditorium, but they wouldn’t let you buy season tickets back then because the place only held about 3,000 people,” she said. “They’d only let you go to about one out of every three games.”
Though Kennedy and the Kincaids said they felt jilted, Marchiony insisted the athletic department did all it could to balance fan loyalty with fund-raising needs.
“It doesn’t make us happy to move people out of their seats,” Marchiony said. “But if you look at other point systems in place at other universities, you’ll see that unlike most of them, ours is not solely tied to donations. It’s set up so you also get points for longevity, for loyalty and for service to the university. That’s rare.”
Marchiony dismissed often-heard concerns that next season’s fans would be less exuberant — more “wine and cheese” — than those in the past and that big-money corporations would snatch all the good seats.
“I am 100-percent positive that the atmosphere in Allen Fieldhouse will be exactly the same as it’s been for the past 49 years,” he said. “The assumption that loyal fans are going to be replaced with fans who are somehow less loyal is not a valid assumption.”
And there has been no indication, Marchiony said, that corporations intend to structure their donations in ways designed to score more tickets than they’ve had in the past.
“We’ve not seen that at all,” he said, noting the point system limits accounts with 1,003 points or more to six tickets.
“When I hear people talk about how the corporations are going to take over, I try to remind them that the people they’re worried about are the same people who’ve been in the fieldhouse for years,” he said. “Corporate donors are not new.”
Switching to a priority point system is expected to significantly increase athletic department revenues.
“This is not something that gives us pleasure,” Marchiony said. “It’s something that has to be done. The reality in today’s college athletics is that you have to raise money and that money is not going to come from taxpayers. It has to come from private donors who can and want to support the university’s athletic programs.”
KU Athletic Department’s $25 million budget ranks in “the lower third of the Big 12,” Marchiony said.
Not everyone is upset about the point system.
“Reseating the fieldhouse is something that’s long overdue,” said Mike Smallwood, whose season tickets last season were in the eighth row from the rafters.
“I just wish there’d been more loyalty shown the longtime ticket holders,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right to me that the faculty and staff were grandfathered in and the longtime ticket holders were not.
“I support going to a point system; I just wish it was done in a way that did more to protect the loyal fans who’ve had tickets for 20 or 40 years but who don’t happen to have all that much money,” said Smallwood, who lives in Olathe.
Lawrence attorney Glee Smith has had basketball season tickets for 14 years and football tickets for 40. He has 337 points under the new system.
“I sit in one of the middle sections — not on the floor. It’s bench seating,” he said. “It looks like I’ll be moving farther to the side, which is bad. But I may get a seat back, which would be good.”
Smith said he sympathized with people like Kennedy and the Kincaids as well as the athletic department.
“When this was first proposed, I thought it was a terrible thing to do,” Smith said. “But over time I’ve come to realize that it’s probably inevitable. It’s something they have to do.”
He reviewed his point totals with department officials last week.
“I was really pleased with their demeanor. They were very courteous, very professional,” Smith said. “I think they care.”
On that point, Kennedy agreed. “Oh, yes, the girl I dealt with was very nice,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell who was going to start crying first, her or me.”
Interactive seating plan guide: See where your seats likely would have been last season
Calculate your point totals
6News video: KU officials try to clear questions about tickets (6-1-04)
Official KUAC seating breakdown by Allen Fieldhouse sections
Official KUAC seating breakdown by Allen Fieldhouse sections