My View From the cheap seats

I have just completed my least favorite ritual of my otherwise joyful obsession with Georgia football. I bought a season parking pass.

Not found one. Not luckily stumbled upon one. I bought one outright, at face value, with no middleman, no scalper, no guy named “Brad” texting me from a 404 number at 11:47 p.m. It cost $306. That’s the official, honest-to-goodness price, printed neatly on the receipt so I can look at it later and sigh.

Here’s the math, which is always how my joy dies. My football ticket costs $80 per game. Parking breaks down to about $44 per game. That means my total cost to attend a single Georgia home game is $124. For comparison, my $44 parking fee will buy a pizza and a couple of beers at Mellow Mushroom, and leave enough change to tip the bartender and feel morally superior about it.

I am opposed to paying to park on philosophical grounds. I’ve always believed parking should be free. Not cheap. Free. Like breathing. Or opinions. Or unsolicited advice from people who haven’t lived in your house but somehow know exactly how you should live your life.

Does the University of Georgia think I’m Ubering in from Gainesville? Is there a secret network of helicopter pads I don’t know about? Are they imagining me parachuting into Athens like some sort of khaki-clad special operative whose mission is to watch a football game and eat a hot dog that costs as much as a small appliance?

Parking has become just another hand in the pocket of a hobby that has grown exponentially more expensive over the last three or four years. Tickets are up. Concessions are up. Merchandise prices are apparently based on whatever the market will bear and whatever a credit card will tolerate before it quietly whimpers in your wallet.

I could make my car payment three times over for what the secondary market wanted for Georgia–Texas tickets in Austin a couple of years ago. That wasn’t a sporting event. That was a financial stress test. I half expected my bank to call afterward and ask if everything was okay at home.

What makes paying to park especially offensive is its utter lack of charm. You don’t get a souvenir. You don’t get a story. You don’t even get the illusion of value. You are paying money to stop moving. That’s it. The entire transaction is based on the idea that your car will sit still for several hours and not wander off.

And don’t get me started on the language. “Pass.” A parking pass. As if this is some exclusive backstage experience. As if I’ll be meeting the asphalt personally and taking photos with it afterward.

I wish I had been smarter when I was younger. I should have bought a small piece of land in downtown Atlanta, thrown down some asphalt, painted a few crooked white lines, and charged people $50 a day for the privilege of leaving their vehicle there.

Instead, here I am, dutifully paying for parking so I can attend the thing I love, telling myself it’s worth it, because Saturdays in the fall still feel like Saturdays in the fall. I grumble. I complain. I do the math. Then I pull into my designated spot, shut off the engine, and start the long walk toward the stadium. And just like that, I forget how much it cost. At least until the credit card bill comes.