Behind the Scenes, Some Husky Football Fans Are Not Happy

An onslaught of changes have exasperated even the most loyal follower.

Husky fans enjoy themselves at the CFP national championship game. / Skylar Lin Visuals

This loyal University of Washington football fan has been a generous financial donor for many decades, owns a half-dozen season tickets in a prime location, regularly hosts a tail-gate experience as well attended as any, often travels to the biggest games on the road and has even acted as a sounding board for previous Husky athletic directors.

Yet at the last minute, this team follower -- and we'll keep his name out of it so he doesn't face any repercussions -- has pulled out of attending Saturday night's season opener against Weber State. He's not going. He sent out an email to friends indicating as much. He normally would be the last person in Seattle who would do something like that.

While people generally are eager to see coach Jedd Fisch launch a new era of Husky football, the UW behind the scenes is dealing with a fan base exasperated over ticket and parking changes not to mention no cable-TV access to the opener.

The big complaint is, that with the changing face of college football and with each new athletic director -- and there have been three over the past 12 months -- the UW game-day experience is growing increasingly more and more impersonal as well as pushing cost to the outer limits whereas tradition doesn't stand much of a chance anymore when going up against the rapid pursuit of revenue.

For instance, take the ticket situation. The UW is trying to move the process to paperless, where fans have to access their seats using cell phones. As is his tradition, the aforementioned fan likes to spread his multiple tickets around on different Saturdays to family members and friends, but he can't do this anymore without a paper ticket.

The school solution is to charge him an added $30 per paper ticket, $50 when mailed, which might not seem like a tremendous amount, but when you're already paying exorbitant prices for seats, the seat license and parking, making general donations and digging deep for an NIL contribution, an added $30 can be a breaking point.

Tail-gating for some has faced potential interruptions with the UW now in a concentrated mode to offer food and other amenities while suggesting it might claim the prime parking areas along the Montlake Cut at some point to enable this, displacing a lot of older fans.

This also is a ticket relocation year in which fans can make all of the payments required as before and still lose their preferred seats to a higher bidder, which is what another 45-year season-ticket holder shockingly had happen to him. His paid-for parking similarly was moved to a less convenient area, ending his tail-gating efforts that began with his parents and continued with his brother-in-law. He has suggested he might not be long for Husky Stadium moving forward either.

Further bad news is these unhappy UW fans simply can't stay home and watch the Weber State opener from the comfort of their couch. A cable-TV turf battle surfaced at the last minute with the Huskies, Oregon, USC and UCLA faced with not having their season-opening games shown on the Big Ten Network.

It's hard to be a sports fan these days, not to mention really expensive. For those who might have tried to divert their attention from this much more complicated Husky football experience by becoming more serious Mariner fans, they could have looked all over their overly expensive cable-TV package on Friday night and not found the game from Anaheim. It was available only to those with an Apple TV account.

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