University of Miami: A Season Tickets Tale. By Youbetcha'

I see my experience with UM a prime example of what's going wrong in our communities and indeed, the world. What is in play is the emergence of the corporate mentality at all costs.

As someone who was a season ticket holder for a zillion years (actually 25), the university’s greed eventually made me tell them to keep five season tickets... First we were told to give them $10,000 a seat for the seats they decided to convert to box seats; those were seats we had since college.

So UM moved us; we paid more for our new seats and 5 years later, they take away our parking passes that came with the tickets (that they blamed on the city). Then they offered the parking pass back to us for an extra $500.00 a year.

Within 2 years after that, we were forced to buy an extra ticket because UM seated an oversize bully next to us who would press his body against whoever was there (not a great experience for business clients and scary for our kids). He then decided that the extra seat was his, so he would drape his sweaty body parts on it and the UM athletics director didn't give a crap. It was an embarrassment to have to ask the police make the man stop and should have been unnecessary.

In the end, UM decided that they would nail us for an extra $2,000 per seat to sit in seats that we had sat in for 15 years.

It was over. No more fighting traffic, no more parking at the hospital overpasses and walking a mile, no more eating dog meat from the street-side vendors, no more having our cars broken into... no more. Our love affair with the big U was gone.

The saddest thing was that our “stadium section” all dated, got married, pregnant (divorced?) and watched our kids grow-up with the same rows of strangers over those years. As we grew-up together, our section became business owners, school board executives, college graduates, a county elevator maintenace guy and even community activists. We even launched a politician or two. The younger people that transitioned into the section repeated the dating/marriage/baby pattern and we proudly watched the process as their lives changed.

That was UM. That was the UM tradition.

As the UM's Board of Trustee's egos grew and as they encouraged an environment of greed, their management process became the death knell for our amazing 4 month-a-year community. We were forced to scatter and many of us gave-up season tickets because we were finally tired of giving more to UM and actually getting less.

By the way, for our section, it was not a winning team that kept us buying tickets – we were there before they were national champs --- it was the community and common bond of the Orange Bowl that united us.

I would shrug it off, except I see my experience with UM a prime example of what's going wrong in our communities and indeed, the world. What is in play is the emergence of the corporate mentality at all costs.

The UM Board of Trustees is a dismal failure in exhibiting good business sense and ethics to their alumni, their community and the world. What were they thinking?