The joy of parking

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Chris Jackson

Trying to park on the UA campus during a major sporting event.

Men's basketball is the most popular sport here. I'd be stupid if I tried to convince anyone of that. Yet McKale only seats 14,000-plus people, most of them old, rich alumni.

So why do they take every damned parking space on campus and make you pay for them on game day?

Why? Money, of course.

The UA is the greediest corporate monstrosity this side of Microsoft. It's all about money here, and if you don't believe it, smack yourself and return to reality from that happy place where students really matter to the fat-cats in skyboxes.

We don't. If we did, we'd have more than the measly speck of seats we're allotted every year in McKale. If we did, the regents wouldn't be talking about raising tuition for the umpteenth consecutive year.

Someone asked me this summer what is the ultimate lesson I will take away from my four years here.

I said that it's that nothing matters besides money. People don't matter. They never will, not here.

On Sunday I had the wonderful pleasure of driving over to McKale at 1 p.m. for Coach Tomey's press conference. I ran into the most joyous group of people on the planet, the parking attendants employed by Arizona for basketball games.

First off they wouldn't let us park next to McKale, saying they needed those spots for the reserved, really rich people. We relented, after all, even the Star and Citizen reporters weren't being let in, and they told us to go park on the north lawn of McKale.

After a five minute argument to convince the attendant to let us to park there, mind you it's two hours till the game between UA and some Lithuanian club team, we had to hide over alongside the football players' cars and hope we didn't get towed for not having a basketball pass.

Then, to top that off, I had to pay to park behind the Union when I came back to work.

Sure, I'm whining about losing five bucks and being treated rudely by a guy who makes about that much an hour, but this trend of screwing everyone on earth for money is what makes me dislike going here.

How many parents did the UA screw when it moved the Oregon game to 4:30 on Halloween? But TV money outweighed fan support.

We in the press have been bashing fans for weeks, but I'm starting to feel sympathetic for them. The UA gouges them for parking, concessions, ticket prices and then screws up game times and expects great fan support.

Guess what? It's not gonna happen. In this age of overtly sensitive people, they do take it personally when the UA zaps them for more money.

Tuition will go up, the student ticket allocation will shrink, parking will become harder to find as more craters are blasted out of the ground for new buildings and the power elite around here will wonder why people are upset.

The UA does not need to turn every garage and parking lot on campus into a pay lot on basketball days. There are only 14,000 people going, and trust me, they're not all driving separate cars!

And maybe, just maybe the UA can say to TV that it has to keep the game on a certain day at a certain time because otherwise no fans will show up. If the UA would support its fans better, the fans would show more support.

If I wasn't reporting on the games I'd stay home. Because after all, they'll be on TV. And that way I can avoid giving up $5 to park a mile from the game I'm not going to.

Chris Jackson is a junior majoring in journalism. He can be reached via e-mail at Chris.Jackson@wildcat.arizona.edu.