The Basketball Ticket Saga

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Time has a way of losing bits and pieces of history. Such is the case of the basketball ticket saga. In an unusual sort of way, this tale revolves around losing a basketball game in Bowling Green’s E.A. Diddle Arena, where Western Kentucky University’s Hilltoppers play. Nevertheless, it is a story for the ages.

It was the 1981-1982 basketball season, and Clem Haskins was in his second season as head coach, taking over after Gene Keady had departed for Purdue University. The Hilltoppers finished the regular season 18-8, with a nifty 23-2 home court record and an Ohio Valley Conference co-championship. The two losses were to the University of Louisville (71-66) in the finals of the Wendy’s Classic and to Duquesne University, 63-62 in overtime.

Back then, the Hilltoppers ruled the OVC. Occasionally, Murray State University or Eastern Kentucky University would rise up and win, and then so would Middle Tennessee State University. But as far as WKU fans were concerned, when we didn’t win, it was an upset. 

I had recently been hired as the executive director of what was then the Hilltopper Hundred Club, the fundraising arm for WKU athletics and later called the Hilltopper Athletic Foundation. A couple of years before, the school had replaced the pull-out bleacher seats on the court with what are now referred to as the cushioned Red Towel Seats. Believe it or not, those backless bleacher seats, even with their proximity to the court, were the last to fill up back then. What the Hundred Club had to use in raising money were the Red Towel Seats and one pie-shaped section in the corner of Diddle Arena. That was it. And in 1980, the organization was bringing in less than $100,000.

We had a hard-charging volunteer board of directors that included coach Ted Hornback, who is considered the founding father of the Hundred Club; athletic director John Oldham; assistant athletic director Jim Richards; football coach Jimmy Feix; and Pam Herriford, coordinator of women’s athletics. My main purpose was to raise money while staying within the guidelines of NCAA rules.

With the success of the 1981-1982 team and the fact that the OVC Tournament would be played in Diddle Arena, there was little doubt among anyone who could spell “red towel” that WKU would win and advance to the NCAA Tournament. During the season, WKU had beaten EKU twice, split with Murray and owned a pair of lopsided wins over MTSU.

In early February, I made a suggestion to the Hundred Club board: Because we were such a lock to win the tournament and advance to the NCAA, we should consider buying a few tickets for our Hundred Club members at a couple of regional sites. There was nothing brilliant about the proposal. It was simple: Make sure our Hundred Club members had tickets to see our team play in the NCAA. Our board was all in.

Recognizing we didn’t have a hidden stash or slush fund, and sometimes moved forward on fumes, board member Wendell Strode, then an officer at a local bank, offered to secure a loan for us to purchase tickets at two NCAA Mideast first-round sites. We decided to buy 1,200 tickets in Nashville and 1,000 in Indianapolis. We reasoned that we’d have a little more interest in Nashville because of proximity. That’s 2,200 tickets at $20 per ticket for a total of $44,000. Believe me, in 1982, that was a gamble with money we didn’t have. But hey, it wasn’t really a gamble at all. We were a sure thing … remember?

Here is where I need to back up a bit. While many believe this was the first time the Hundred Club had purchased tickets like this, it wasn’t. It had been chaotic back in 1978, when then-coach Jim Richards’ team played in the first round of the NCAA in Knoxville, and we were left scrambling for what few tickets we could get our hands on. It was a shame more Hilltopper fans didn’t get to see Richards’ team knock off third-ranked Syracuse University. That was the afternoon he beat head coach Jim Boeheim and Rick Pitino on the same day, as Pitino was a Syracuse assistant at the time.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the NCAA was not quite the cash cow it is today, so teams that qualified for the tourney usually were assigned to play at sites close to their schools. Bus travel was far less expensive than air. That is why, during the 1981 tournament season, our little Hundred Club had purchased tickets in Dayton and Tuscaloosa, two Mideast locations.

We won the OVC and then lost to Gene Bartow’s upstart University of Alabama at Birmingham team in Tuscaloosa, but we had tickets for our fans. The Dayton tickets were easy to unload.

Outside of Bowling Green, little was said about the Hundred Club’s effort to take care of our members.

Here’s the rest of the story.

All of those NCAA regional sites had been trying to sell their tickets for months. They were available to any person or group that wanted them. But then it was announced that the OVC winner would be playing the University of Kentucky in Nashville, and the winner of that game would play UofL. And we had 1,200 tickets in addition to the anticipated allotment we would get from the NCAA. Were we cutting edge or what? We returned our 1,000 tickets to Indianapolis for a refund.

I was informed by the Vanderbilt University ticket office that our tickets could be picked up in mid-February, so Richards, board member Denny Wedge and I headed south with a $24,000 cashier’s check in hand. We delivered the check and were told our tickets would be boxed and ready in an hour or so. The three of us returned after lunch, picked up the tickets and drove back to Bowling Green.

I stored the tickets in my office just off the main lobby of Diddle Arena, waiting to distribute them to our fans after we won the OVC Tournament. WKU defeated Morehead State University in the first round, and MTSU turned back Murray to set the OVC finals. But then, a not-so-funny thing happened. We lost. MTSU crushed our hopes and dreams with a 54-52 win in the Diddle. We were out, but we still had those 1,200 tickets in Nashville to deal with. The matchup between UofL and UK seemed like a sure thing. Although MTSU was good, they would be no match for the Wildcats. 

Immediately, the Hundred Club ticket committee called an emergency meeting at Oldham’s house. We tossed around several ideas. Do we first offer the tickets to our members, who would want to see the so-called “dream game,” or do we use them as an enticement to schedule future games with UK or UofL?

Our ticket committee quickly decided to sell them to Wendy’s Classic Tournament Director Dan Davis to use as leverage in attracting teams to future tournaments in Bowling Green. The committee decided that if WKU wasn’t involved, we didn’t need to be in the ticket business. It turned out to be a great decision.

Davis asked me if I would contact UK on behalf of Wendy’s. I reached Joe Dean Jr., an assistant to head coach Joe B. Hall, and told him that Wendy’s had 1,200 tickets and would sell them to UK at face value ($20 each) in return for an appearance in the Wendy’s Classic in 1983, ’84 or ’85. I then sweetened the pot by telling Dean that WKU, in turn, would agree to play in a future UK Invitational Tournament. Then, I added that we were giving UK first chance before calling UofL or any other schools that would be playing in Nashville.

Dean thanked me and said he’d run it by Coach Hall and get back to me. An hour or so later, he called back. The tone in his voice had changed. “Coach Hall is not willing to make a commitment like that,” he told me. Davis quickly called Bill Olsen, the athletic director at UofL. Davis already had a relationship with Olsen because his team had previously played in the Wendy’s tournament.

Years later, Olsen told me it was, at the time, a no-brainer. “We wanted all of the tickets we could get,” he said.

But the ticket episode was not over.

Someone at UK called Vandy athletic director Roy Kramer, host of the NCAA game in Nashville, and complained that WKU was using the tickets as a bribe to get a game with UK. Kramer denied receiving a call from UK, but sportswriter Bob Watkins dug a little deeper into the accusations and found that UK officials actually had called Kramer. He wrote that his UK source told him, “They were really upset about the whole thing.”

Soon, both my home and office phones were on fire from media outlets across Kentucky and as far away as the Dallas Morning News.

Watkins’ source used the words “unethical” and “immoral” to describe how the UK officials had expressed their feelings to Kramer.

Everything that had been done with the tickets in our possession had the approval of Oldham, and the way he responded to the media and a call from Kramer made me respect him even more. Oldham told Kramer the tickets had been turned over to Davis, who was negotiating to get someone in the Wendy’s Classic. Oldham then told the media that tickets were routinely used to arrange and schedule games, adding that I had acted through it all with his permission.

The bottom line was that it was sour grapes. UK was embarrassed that little old WKU had the foresight to buy tickets, investing $44,000 for our booster club, while many of their big hitters were left to find them on their own. The Associated Press wrote that the tickets, in anticipation of the UK/UofL matchup, were so hot that an ad appeared in the Louisville Times offering to sell a pair for $1,000. The advertiser later told the Times: “My phone rang every 30 to 60 seconds, so I took it off the hook.”

I even had a phone call from someone telling me to name my price if I could slip just two tickets out of the 1,200 to sell him. I refused, but he told me to think about it and call him. He never got my call and, not that it mattered, he wasn’t even a Hundred Club member.

To get to play UofL on Saturday, UK had to first beat MTSU, the OVC Tournament winner, on Thursday. And wouldn’t you know it, the Blue Raiders did it again, this time beating the Wildcats. UofL, now with more tickets than they ever thought possible, went on to defeat MTSU and later advanced to the Final Four in New Orleans. 

Not only had our season been derailed but so had UK’s, and gone also was the anticipation of that so-called dream game.

Today, it would be nearly impossible to guess an NCAA first-round site. Teams now are sent in all directions with little regard to proximity. But back in the day, our Hilltopper Hundred Club was cutting edge, proving that even when losing, we still won. 

Gary P. West was the first full-time director of the Hilltopper Athletic Foundation, serving from 1981 through 1993.