And many evidently won't.
Nearly half of the 3,030 seats reserved for students in 23,180-seat Washington-Grizzly Stadium were still available Thursday morning, two days before Saturday's season opener against the Maine Black Bears.
Students can still purchase seats as well, for $7, as long as they're available.
"I'd like to say I have $7 to pull out any time I need to," said Liz Kavon, a sophomore from Plentywood. "But it's a big thing. For most students, if we can find an extra $5 on a weekly basis, we call ourselves lucky."
On Monday mornings in seasons past, students gobbled up most, if not all, of the 3,030 free seats, plus 300 more that were available for $5 for students' guests.
But it appeared students would still be able to get a ticket as Saturday's kickoff approached.
The guest seats in the student section, which now cost $10, sold quickly.
"It won't stop me from going," said David Schwartz, a junior, just before he bought a ticket on Friday. "But I don't like having to pay for an athletic director's mistakes. It just sucks. Three or four dollars would have been a lot better."
"It's unfortunate we have to make up a debt due to irresponsible accounting," said law school student Garrett Budds.
UM raised season ticket prices from $148 to $180, and implemented the charge for student tickets, as part of a plan to deal with a nearly
$1 million athletic department deficit.
However, university officials point out that the monies collected from students, in the form of athletic fees and the football ticket charge, go to adequately fund the athletic department, not to pay down a deficit that was caused by overspending and accounting errors.
Using a zero-based budget process, the university determined it needed another $670,000 added to its base athletic department budget - bringing the total to nearly $10 million a year - to field competitive teams in the Big Sky Conference.
"Under the guidance of the president (George Dennison), we were told that monies collected from students should not go to pay down the deficit, but to take care of the program," said Bob Duringer, vice president for finance and administration.
But many students still feel the extra $50 bill they'll need to go to football games this fall stems from mismanagement.
The $7 charge is for football games only. Students will still be admitted free to other athletic events, including Grizzly and Lady Griz basketball games.
"The thing is, they weren't really free before," said junior Tim Denman as he waited in line Friday to buy a ticket. "We've always had to pay an athletic fee that was supposed to cover this. This is just another cost we have to add to books, tuition, the athletic fee, everything else."
"I think students figured they'd start charging a couple of bucks sooner or later," Kavon said. "But $7 ... "
Jan Pierce, assistant director for business affairs at the Adams Center, said that at the rate tickets to the Maine game were selling at midday Friday, "If it's not sold out, it'll be close."
The ticket office started the day with about 1,000 seats left in the student section, and had sold 300 of them by lunch time. Students had purchased 140 of them; 160 were sold at $23.
That means even more revenue for the athletic department, but it still concerns Don Read.
Read, the former Grizzly coach who guided the football program to its first national championship, was hired as athletic director in late May after Wayne Hogan resigned in the wake of the budget crisis. Read makes no bones about it: He would prefer 3,030 students in the 3,030 student seats.
"We need the students there," Read said. "University students are what we're all about. We're in this business because we're part of the university, just like they are."
The AD said the issue might be revisited if student attendance plummets this season.
"If we're not selling tickets to them it means we've alienated the students, and we don't need that," Read said. "I was strung up enough as a coach. I don't need that in this office."
Many of the students buying tickets Friday to the Maine game said they would not be back for all of the other six home games.
"I'll go to this one," Schwartz said, "but then I'll wait for the conference to start. I won't go to the rest of the nonconference games."
"I called my mom to get money for a Cat-Griz ticket last year (in Bozeman)," Kavon said. "But I can't call my mom every time there's a home game."
And she said UM may have created a problem for itself outside the stadium if students choose to stay outside the gates, drink and watch the game on TV.
"I know a lot of people who are just going to be tailgating the whole game now," she said. "Which could be a problem."
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 523-5260 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
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