It’s been almost two years since I have attended a Sun Devils home game and I don’t see myself going to any more before I graduate. The last game I went to featured ASU running back Kalen Ballage scoring an NCAA-record eight touchdowns in one game. How could that not make me want to come back, right?!

Weather

Well, the temperature that night was a blistering 104 degrees at kickoff, and I was packed in with several thousand of my closest friends in the aptly named student section, The Inferno.

Tickets

The problem was that my actual closest friends were on the complete other side of The Inferno, and the heavily monitored wristbands we were wearing did not give us access to each other’s section. In order to get these coveted wristbands we had trekked across campus to the stadium early Saturday morning and stood in line for over an hour.  Because only half of my group of friends were able to go at that time, there was no way for us all to sit together. Instead those friends all had to come individually and ended up in several different sections themselves! It was not a user friendly experience, to say the least.

Parking

We had all piled into my car hoping to avoid paying for parking by using our parking pass for the garage directly next to the football stadium. When we arrived to the parking structure, however, we were met with a sign stating that our pass was not valid on game days and that we would have to pay. While it wasn’t a huge amount of money, the fact that the campus parking pass costs $700+ dollars per year and doesn’t work for game day really turned us off.

This season, I had heard about ASU’s initiative to make the ticket buying experience easier for students with an online mobile app. I can recall hearing several different people talking about how difficult a process it was and how many technical difficulties they faced. I think hearing this made me not even want to attempt it.

Now, with almost a year under its belt, the feedback has been that the ticketing system is easier than ever and usually goes off without a hitch. They have worked out most, if not all, of the bugs. If only ASU could make an app that made the weather 30 degrees cooler now! Some kind of fan rewards program would definitely entice me to go back. If I knew I was earning points towards ASU hoodies or t-shirts it would make enduring the heat that much easier. Reserving a portion of the parking spots for student tickets would also make the experience much more pleasurable.