get your tickets here
For the 1947-48 season of University of Kentucky men’s basketball, only students enrolled at UK could watch the Wildcats play in person.
The program’s home at the time was Alumni Gym, which opened in 1924 and held 2,800 people. At the beginning of the season, each student received a booklet that included odd or even slips—because the student body was then about double the capacity of Alumni Gym, students only got tickets for half the games.
“To get through the gates tonight, the scholars will have to produce ticket number 18 from their event coupon books,” wrote Kevin Cook in House of Champions, in an account of the UK vs. Tennessee game played on Valentine’s Day 1948.
Students—and some suspiciously older people who illegally bought tickets off of students—filed in, dressed in formal clothes and, often, fashionable hats.
UK had lost two games that season, but the Fabulous Five would not lose again. That night, the Wildcats beat the Volunteers, 69-42.
The seatbacks from the original Memorial Coliseum are now on display in the renovated Historic Memorial Coliseum, a detail I really enjoy.
…
I read House of Champions last month and absolutely loved it. It’s a history of where the UK men’s basketball program has played basketball over the last 100-plus years; by extension, it’s a history of the UK men’s basketball program in general.
As a lifelong fan of UK athletics and an alumna, I was interested to read about the changes in student ticketing over the years. Today, UK plays in Rupp Arena, which would only fit about two-thirds of UK’s enrolled students—and we all know that the seat allocation for students is only a fraction of that. As a student, I would have loved a student-only designation for tickets, but as a now-non-student who attended a game a month ago, I’m thankful that’s not the case.
I was reading House of Champions, which I recommend to all UK fans, the week of Thanksgiving, so I discussed the ordeal of getting tickets with my aunt KK, who attended UK’s pharmacy school in the ‘90s.
At that time, KK told me, students had to buy tickets for every game at the Memorial Coliseum ticket window, which typically meant waiting in line outside. Sometimes, if it was especially cold, they would open the doors to let students wait inside.
The designated sale time for tickets sometimes created a conflict with KK’s classes. A professor once scheduled a quiz on a morning went tickets went on sale. KK and her friend begged him to let them go get tickets and still take the quiz.
“I’ll give the quiz at the end of class,” he said. “That’s all I can do.”
After getting the tickets at Memorial, KK and her friend ran, barely making it before the end of class.
As soon as they burst through the doors, the professor said, “Okay, class, time for the quiz.”
…
By the time I was a freshman interested in attending games, I still went to Memorial Coliseum for tickets, but it was typically less stressful. The order in which we arrived had no bearing on whether we got tickets, so no chilly outdoor waits were required.
As we walked in, up the ramp that was then charming in its datedness but is now white and shiny after the renovation, an attendant gave each student a slip with a number on it. Then we filed into the bleachers and waited to see if our number was called in the lottery. If it was, we got into a (still indoor!) line to purchase tickets for up to four games at a time.
I spent several Monday nights at lotteries during my freshman and sophomore years, getting tickets for as many games as I could. Before my junior year, though, UK switched to an online lottery system for season tickets—no more in-person waiting at all to get tickets.
In hindsight, this actually worked out well for me during the spring 2019 semester—I had a Monday night class with Gurney Norman, so if the lotteries were still held then, I would have had to beg one of Kentucky’s literary legends to let me miss for basketball tickets.
Ironically, this new system forced UK students into outdoor lines once again. The online season tickets didn’t come with assigned seats, so the student section was first come, first served (which led to a lot of frustrating line-cutting). During my senior and her freshman year, Ashtyn and I spent many hours on the sidewalk outside of Rupp Arena, with coats to keep warm and books to stay entertained.
Nearly every game I attend, I take a moment to glance at the eight championship banners that hang over one end of Rupp Arena.
The first, of course, is from 1948.