Gopher Score to replace Gopher Points in March

I was at the game last night talking to a U official who I've gotten to know and he told me that apparently the Gopher Points program is going away and will be replaced by a Gopher Score program.

What I was told is that Gopher Score will replace Gopher Points as of March 1, 2013. This will NOT result in any more re-seating. The Gopher Points was a Phase 1 for the re-seating but Gopher Score will be the permanent program going forward.

Here are the highlights that I recall:

- All of the sports are together now. You will not have a Gopher Score for football and one for basketball and one for hockey. Everyone is together.
- You will get 10 points for every consecutive season you have season tickets for every sport. So if you have baseball season tickets for 5 years (50 points), basketball for 10 years (100 points) and football for 3 years (30 points) you would have 180 points for this portion of your Gopher Score. I think this is a nice move to reward season ticket holders of multiple sports. If you stop your season tickets in any one year, you start over for that sport.
- If you are a U letter winner you get 25 points one time only.
- You get 1 point per $100 you gave lifetime up until the point of the new program.
- You get 10 points per $100 for you give that year (this starts over each year).

I told him that I thought this last one would receive a lot negative feedback as I said they are really going to piss off some long-time donors as what you are telling them is that you value their dollar today ten-times more than you value the dollar you gave yesterday. He said that the Gopher Score program wasn't set to change, but it could if there is a lot of negative reaction so I wouldn't be surprised if this 10-to-1 ratio doesn't change before it gets officially announced.

Since this will NOT lead to re-seating, what it does is allow supporters to use this as an opportunity to improve on tickets if you were to move up at one of the Big 3, sit in the lower bowl at the BTT for hoops, better seating at football road games/bowl game, etc. I'm not sure when the formal communications will come out for this.

I said this on the Gopher football board as well, but they will have to switch that 10-to-1 ratio for new donations vs. old otherwise some long time loyal donors will not be happy.

What's the current ratio? 2.5 to 1 sticks in my head, but I don't have the Gopher Points literature in front of me. What strikes me is that this will accentuate the difference between those who make preferred seating donations and those who don't.

My translation?

Expect the U to re-seat the venues (TCF, Williams, Mariucci) sooner rather than later. I'll say no later than the 2015-16 school year.

So if I buy Volleyball/Baseball/Women's BB tickets, each consecutive year is worth the same as the $2,000 I put down for Gopher BB tickets each year. What am I missing?

Cheesedog said:

So if I buy Volleyball/Baseball/Women's BB tickets, each consecutive year is worth the same as the $2,000 I put down for Gopher BB tickets each year. What am I missing?

Click to expand...

Well, you'd be missing an entire men's basketball season. What's the point of accumulating points to use at volleyball and baseball? Nothing. You want points for the big three. So yes, get your points at those sports, but its not worth much.