Temperatures dropped to 33 degrees Friday night, but frigid weather didn’t stop nearly 300 die-hard Ute fans from setting up camp in front of the ticket office at Rice-Eccles Stadium to wait for tickets to the highly-anticipated Nov. 22 Utah vs. BYU football game to go on sale.
Some students pitched their tents just after the end of the Utes’ last-minute victory over TCU Thursday night. Brandon Robbins and his brother set up their tent just as the game was ending.
“After (TCU) threw the interception, I was throwing down my tarp,” said Robbins, a sophomore in mechanical engineering who was first in the line of tents. They brought tents, chairs, sleeping bags and food to make their stay more comfortable.
Like many people waiting in line, the Robbins brothers made friends with the people around them.
Robert Carboni, a graduate student in sociology waiting in the line, said he also left the TCU game, went to his car, grabbed his gear and started settling in for the night.
No. 2 in line, Carboni said he has had experience waiting in line for football tickets.
“When I was an undergrad in ’96, I camped out for BYU tickets,” Carboni said. “I was the 10th person in line and we got pretty good seats, but that was before the MUSS.”
Employees at the ticket office said they had roughly 2,500 tickets remaining to sell for the game.
“The line extended to the student gate, which was gate J,” said Hunter Hughes, a sophomore in Middle Eastern studies who has worked as a ticket office employee for a little more than a year.
The stadium approved of the fans camping out on the sidewalk and set up portable toilets to facilitate their needs.
To boost the fans’ spirits, at about 8:30 p.m. Friday, football head coach Kyle Whittingham and some Utah football players, including Louie Sakoda and Zane Beadles, showed up at the stadium to hand out 30 pizzas from The Pie to the fans.
The line of tents, which wrapped around the ticket office, stretched down the sidewalk south of the stadium and continued up the east side of the stadium. Many people brought televisions and Xbox game systems to pass the time. Extension cords ran from the wall in front of the ticket office up 500 South in an effort to support the many movies and video games.
Some fans preferred to wait the old-fashioned way. A handful of students made the experience as rustic as possible and opted for fire pits and acoustic guitar.
“We went old school, not like these guys with their Xbox and TVs,” Carboni said.
Steve Brown, a senior in environmental studies, made a Facebook group called “Welcome to Utesville” to encourage people to camp out for the tickets.
“Some friends graduated last year, so I wanted to get them tickets,” Brown said.
Members of the group began to arrive at the ticket line at about 9:30 a.m.
Brown said he estimated they would have about 25 people join them before the night was over.
Dane Slentz, a member of the Utesville group and a senior in biochemistry, said his only concern was people trying to sneak in and jump the line.
The students and graduates who joined Brown’s Utesville group entertained themselves with cards, Monopoly and simple conversation.
Since tents were set up on school property, alcohol was prohibited, but it didn’t stop some students who brought in their own drinks.
When asked how he planned on spending his night in Utesville, recently graduated engineering student Pat Conlon replied, “Drink non-alcoholic beverages, obviously.”
Nick AndrewStudents set up tents and camped out Thursday and Friday nights to get tickets to the Utah vs. BYU football game. The line of tents stretched from the ticket office to gate J on the east side of the stadium.
Nick AndrewJayson Stenquist, an international studies student and Brandon Robbins a mechanical engineering student set up their tents in the front of ticket office immediately after the game against TCU.