Justin St. Germain senior sports writer

Sentiment around campus has been pretty much unanimous in support of a new system for allocating men's basketball tickets following last fall's fiasco at McKale Center. But the new Zona Zoo plan, though a nice idea, will not remedy the situation, and will only result in more Wildcat fans going only to basketball games.

Students constantly lament the same old things about UA basketball games: The best seats are filled with Tucson's gentry; the student seats are scattered, helter-skelter, in groups of 10 or 12 from behind the basket to those little yellow seats in the sky; tickets are scarce; there's no alcohol.

Well, the old people aren't going anywhere (actually, they are, but they'll be replaced by more), and neither is their money, so a student section courtside isn't coming anytime soon. The NCAA has an aversion to alcohol being served at its games. But ticket availability? That, ASUA and the athletic department think they can fix.

Their solution? Go back to the old lottery system öö which was dumped for no apparent reason in favor of the "elbow women and children on your way to the front of the line" approach öö only now, charge students 35 bucks for a spot in a more exclusive first ticket lottery. Oh, and a newsletter. And free admission to sporting events that were already free before Zona Zoo came around.

Wow. Sounds great. I know I, for one, was really hoping we could go back to the old system, only with greater financial stratification involved in the ticket-selling process. There's always room for a little more elitism on this campus.

Sarcasm aside, the problem with Zona Zoo is that the only significant difference between it and the old lottery system is the cost. Without a point system (which has been proposed for some time down the road), all that will happen is that attendance at non-basketball events will plummet and actual smaller-sport fans will get screwed.

Hopefully, not everybody is going to be suckered into buying the pass, and a lot of people aren't going to want to pay $4 next year to get into a game they got into for free this year. The fact is, nobody wants to pay to see the baseball team play Wagner on a Tuesday afternoon.

Although the newsletters and Zona Zoo functions are nice, they're not going to make casual fans öö which, in truth, are the vast majority of UA followers. When was the last time you went to a volleyball match? Or suddenly took an interest in gymnastics? The only way to turn an Arizona fan base made up of laid-back SoCal kids into a diehard bunch is by force.

That's where the point system comes in. Obviously, we students lack the simple humanity to simply congregate in line and wait for tickets. This has been proven. So we can't do what Duke or Kansas fans do and camp out. With our track record, odds are the National Guard would have to carpet-bomb Enke Drive with tear gas until John Button Salmon himself wept.

But if we had to go to "other" sporting events in order to get basketball tickets, overall attendance would almost surely rise. There are worse things to do on a weekday evening than watching a powerhouse volleyball team play.

There's a reason why Stanford uses a point system: It works. Stanford draws crowds of thousands to see baseball and volleyball games. And the throngs of Cardinal-clad fans probably have something to do with its Sears Cup-winning athletic department that contends virtually across the board. If you don't think athletes appreciate crowds, go ask one.

True, Arizona is not Stanford. Most UA students couldn't get into Stanford with a lock pick, and Palo Alto doesn't need to board its windows in case the basketball team loses a Final Four game. But a point system like Stanford's could only benefit the athletics department.

Zona Zoo is just a knee-jerk response to yet another UA melee. The lottery will make a welcome return, but weekly e-mails aren't enough to turn a school that can't sell out a football game into a true sports school.

Assistant athletics director Scott McKenzie said the success of Zona Zoo depended on "student initiative." Well, Arizona fans have shown no initiative except one for violence, and without a point system in place to demand fan support, Zona Zoo should be shelved to avoid ripping off the real fans smaller sports already have.