Saving Seats

Over time people have grown their passion for college sports. Stadiums have expanded, and ticket prices have gone up. But one thing has not changed over time, and that is comradery. People want to watch the game whether it be on the television, or in person with their friends. But how is someone able to watch the game with one hundred of their closest buddies, with a first come, first get seating system? Well the answer is really simple, and that being pledges.

Pledges are men that live in Greek houses but aren’t official members. Most houses require pledges to go through pledgeship. Pledgeship is the time period before pledges get initiated into members, most fraternities have specific requirements throughout their pledgeship. Each fraternity has a different process but almost all require pledges to save seats at sporting events. Here at Oklahoma State a student ticket gets you in but doesn’t guarantee you the seat you want. To get the seat you want you must get there early, meaning an hour or so before the game starts. Most people would imagine saving seats for a few people, not ninety guys.

In order to save a seat you have your pledges, or your group stand in the area you want to sit in. This process sounds simple, but the closer you get to game time the harder it becomes. To save seats you tell people that try to come into your space that they can’t sit there. Sometimes the process is simple, and other times it can become really complex. Saving seats requires a nice, but aggressive attitude. Considering that some people you will cross will actually be rude. But coming off rude to them can start the same issues. So it’s always important to try to come off as nice as you can to them. Another issue can be getting the actual seats you want, but we will get to that later.

Like I said earlier, to save seats you have a group of people stand in the area you want to sit in. But how are you going to save seats for ninety guys with a small amount of people? The simple answer is you can’t. Considering you are saving seats in the student section, this area fills up fast and fills up. So in order to save seats for ninety plus people, it would require a minimum of fifteen guys. The more guys added onto that the better, which makes the process go by much easier. So we’ve covered the process, and the amount of people, but what about the time?

Once again, like I mentioned in the text above, in order to get the seats that you want, you must get to the stadium as early as possible. For football games the latest that you should be at Boone Pickens is when the gates open. If you get there too late you will most likely miss out on the spots that you want. Making you unhappy, and the members unhappy. So an ideal time is to get to the gates about thirty minutes before they open. This also depends on who the opponent is, for instance bedlam the lines longer. So we would need to get there much earlier. So the most ideal time being in line for a regular game would be about thirty to forty five minutes before the gates open.

The most intimidating part about saving seats is the competition. On the campus here at Oklahoma State has a large Greek life population. Meaning that there are many other houses that could be potentially competing for the same spots as your house. This is also a very important reason for getting to the stadium so early. When you get in line in front of another fraternity, this eliminates their chance of getting your seats. But that is not all, at Boone Pickens there are lots of different lines at different gates. The quicker you move, which usually means running, the luckier you will get. In some cases two fraternities could enter at the same time in two different lines, but whoever truly got their first would get those seats. The way I like to think of this process is like the Land Run that took place in the late 1800s. In the Land Run, the first to ride their horse or wagon to the spot of land they wanted and take the marker out of the ground would get that certain plot of land. But if they didn’t get to that spot and didn’t take the marker, it wouldn’t be their land.  That process is almost exactly the process we do every home game. At Boone Pickens Stadium, we are running to the seats we want and if we don’t get there first we go find another place to sit. This process is very nerve racking, and intimidating but there is no better feeling of claiming the seats you needed to get.

I interviewed Colton Laughlin who is an older member in the house and he said “saving seats was one of the most intimidating and stressful events we did during pledgeship.” He stated, “the nerves of competing with other houses to get the seats you want is extremely stressful. Colton told me a story about his experiences and said “One time in the past we had an incident with another fraternity, we argued for a while and they just finally admitted that we had been there first.” He stated towards the end of the interview “the end result always felt nice, it always felt nice getting to sit with your buddies in a spot that you earned.”

Like Colton said this task is earned, and is not the easiest. But the end result is the best feeling. It’s almost just like finishing building a house, it was a pain when you built it. But when you walk in and see the end result it’s the best feeling in the world. The whole process of saving seats is not the most fun but the end result is what matters.

This whole process sums up life, it might suck but sometimes a man must suck it up and get his task done. This process might be a pain, but you can learn a lot from it. This skill teaches patience, keeping calm under pressure, and standing up for yourself. The patience aspect of life is a very vital skill. Patience is key for life, things do not always come fast or at the time you necessarily want them to come. The ability to have good patience is a very important key to life. To be able to keep calm under pressure is also a very key element to success. In life there are many stressful situations, and letting a stressful situation dig under your skin can cause a lot of issues. Like, not getting tasks done, failing at tasks, and not being able to operate under the stress. Saving seats with the high anticipation stressful environment is good practice, and key to bettering yourself and your fellow pledge brothers. Being able to stand up for yourself is one of the most important skills you can obtain in life. This skill is very vital in protecting yourself, and those that you love. If people know you aren’t going to take their crap, they will lessen the time they get under your skin. These life lessons are very important, even if they are being taught by saving seats at a football game. But in the end this process is bettering you as a person