I blame Mark Keenum

[BrunswickDawg]

The top 1% of farmers do make great money and we have a few of those in our fan base. But for the most part, farmers operate on razor thin margins and are not going to set aside 25-50K a year to give to the BI. Whereas lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. have more of a regular pay cycle. Ole Miss has more of those degrees than us. However, we are catching up and have made ground in the last 30 years. This is also why I get pissed off at our alumni assc because they fail to reach out to our young alumni that are just starting out in that field. OM puts them in the pipeline the minute they walk across stage.

Our lack of giving long term has us so far behind some of y'all just can't comprehend it. Back in the mid and late 1990s I had 2 seats in what's now Section 21, about 30 rows up. I didn't even have to donate to the Bulldog Club to get them. Great for me because I was a young alum, lived in Atlanta, and was making shit money. My UGA friends were shocked that not only could I afford the tickets, but there was no donation. I had friends with similar seats at UGA. The family had had them for 30 years, and the cumulative donation to have them was $25k. Those are $100k cumulative donation seats now. And thy have a waiting list a mile long if you don't donate enough to keep them. There is not a single non-student season ticket in Athens that doesn't require a donation. Oh, and they just raised seats to $80 a game for 2025 and raised the base donation per seat.

That's where the rubber meets the road in the SEC - and that's what it will really take in terms of commitment needed by our fan base to compete. Want tickets? Donate. Want better seats. Donate a lot more. Want invites to coaches talks - it's gonna be a donation and not some traveling roadshow that stops at the Golden Corral in Natchez. And that goes across sports. That's how the big boys do it. Our fan base will never get this.