Blue Green Madness

by: Lian Nami Buan

 In Basketball, the fight begins behind the ticket booths.

A day after the Ateneo Blue Eagles and the De La Salle Green Archers earned their respective University Athletics Association of the Philippines (UAAP) finals slot, fans found themselves in a needle hole trying to get their hands on those elusive tickets.

Even before the buzzer sounded in the Ateneo-UE Semifinals game that Jay Bondoc was watching, she already had sent messages to friends from Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) asking if they could get her an extra ticket for the Finals. “It’s easier for them to get tickets because the final schools, I think, are given the most tickets by UAAP.” She is a junior student at the Far Eastern University, but remained a Blue Eagle fan at heart. To her and to the other one big fighters, nothing beats experiencing a Blue Championship live.

But she was just a single soul among the thousands that were as desperate for tickets as she was. Ticketnet started selling 9 in the morning of Monday, last September 15, a day after the semifinals declared Ateneo and LaSalle the championship contenders. The slogan ‘Tough Road to Glory’ is probably what the fans had in mind as they jump through fire rings to score tickets. Araneta Coliseum personnels reported that as early as 4 am, there already was a queue for the sales, most of them camped overnight to secure their purchase.

Even when Ticketnet sold only two tickets per person, they were sold out in less than three hours.

“I went to Araneta at 7:30 monday to buy from ticketnet, but by the mass of people I arrived to, there was no chance that I still could get one,” Bondoc said.

But she didn’t arrive to Ateneo and LaSalle crowds but instead to a mix of fans, mostly young adults, that came from different schools all over Manila. The UAAP is primarily meant to promote school spirit, but Ateneo and LaSalle has proven over the years that their students are not alone in promoting theirs. Ateneo-LaSalle games have always been extra special, to the point that even the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) holds an exhibitional “Dream Game” where professionals who are alumni of the said schools get to take their rivalry to higher courts, so to say. Try asking the Trinoma Mall management why they set up the ‘BlueGreen’ lounge last September 6 along the mall’s cinema lobby so fans could watch the game from multiple flatscreen TV’s in an atmosphere attempting to match that of the Big Dome. They would probably tell you that this Ateneo-LaSalle dynasty is too dramatic to pass up. So when Ateneans and LaSallites claim their schools the top 2 most popular among all the others, they aren’t just boasting.

“Some would wonder, why the fuss?” Bondoc said, referring to the attention the said schools have been enjoying for as long as one can remember. “Ofcourse they (Ateneans and LaSallites) know it (the fuss), but the students from other schools are curious, that’s why they watch ateneo-lasalle games too, they wanna see and feel the intensity for themselves,” she said. For her, this curiosity was more of a dream since she was 13, a high school student who can only watch games from their television set in Tarlac. And now that Araneta Coliseum is just a jeepney away from Morayta, from where she studies and stays, its a lot easier for her to see her favorite team play in flesh. “Now is the chance,” she said, “so I always give the best efforts to get tickets.”

“Everyone just wants a firsthand information on these ‘legendary’ games,” Regina Lao, a junior student from AdMU, said. That is only the opinion of an Atenean. Because Miguel Mendez, a LaSallite, has a little more angsty thing to say: “Mas masarap mag cheer against Ateneans, mas glorifying.” Because above all the others, it’s the Ateneans and the LaSallites who craves for the blood the most. “There’s just too much history (between Ateneo and LaSalle),” Lao said. And even from that simple explanation, the tickets sellout became a lot easier to understand.

Perhaps it doesn’t take a Basketball die-hard to know that the Bgy. Ginebra Gin Kings is the most popular team in the Philippines. Ateneo-LaSalle match-up is the amateur equivalent to Ginebra games when it comes to popularity; Ginebra is just 766 people more popular. The second Ateneo-LaSalle game in the Season ‘71 eliminations was witnessed by a record of 22,136 attendees, a hairline shy to Ginebra’s 22, 902 in their PBA Championship game 7 against the Air 21 Express.

Ricky Palou, Ateneo’s Representative to the UAAP board said in earlier reports that students are allowed to buy two tickets only. “There are instances that one student is asked by his friends to buy them tickets, unfair naman sa mga naghihirap pumila,” Lao said. She had to skip a class just to get hold of the tickets made of gold.

The nearing examination week and the costly school projects didn’t keep the students from spending not only their time lining up for tickets but also their 350’s (patron), 300’s (lower box), 220’s (Upper A), 95’s (Upper B), and 55’s (General Admissions) instead of use them for studying or pay for school expenditures. “UAAP is something every college student must experience,” Lao said, “especially the championships.” And ofcourse most especially if your school is in in the championships. This is when college culture enters, when Basketball becomes not only for the passionate lovers of the game but also for those who are arrested with this mentality. “Practically the entire Metro Manila talks about a UAAP game, who doesn’t want to be the guy who watched it live when they talk about it,” Mendez said, pertaining to the heated discussions and arguments found in every walks of society; from tricycle drivers to workers and especially students that is so engrossed with one topic: last night’s UAAP game. As Mendez have said, who wouldn’t want to be the dean of conversation when that happened?

Bro. Bernie Oca, LaSalle’s league representative, said in reports that DLSU created an online reservation system which allows only a 1 is to 1 ticket per student ratio. “Only one ticket will be sold per student. They can also track the number of tickets remaining on real time,” Oca said in an article posted in the Inquirer website. But ofcourse, politics and connections still has something to do with the allotment of tickets. Oca admitted that their first priority are the alumni who has been giving the school support when it comes to UAAP games. Mendez managed to get a ticket from his friend who is within a degree of a basketball circle which Jai Reyes is part of.

Since most tickets are reserved for the contending schools, Ateneo and LaSalle in this case, only a few is left for Ticketnet to sell. That is why however hard Bondoc tried to go to Araneta early, there are just too little tickets for all of them to share.

And desperation times call for desperate measures.

During the highly-attended Ateneo-LaSalle game earlier in the season, some were reported to have paid scalpers as much as 7000 pesos for a patron ticket. Green Archer Head Coach Franz Pumaren, who is also a councilor in Quezon City, asked the QC police friday to double the measures in monitoring the Big Dome area to ensure that tickets are purchased legally. The situation is expected to intensify even more during the tickets selling for Game 2, or maybe Game 3. “If I had the money at the moment, why not?,” Mendez said referring to the overpriced selling of tickets to fans who are willing to do anything just to get pass through the gates. When asked if she was willing to pay an amount exaggeratedly larger than the original price just to get a ticket, Bondoc said, “For an Ateneo-LaSalle do-or-die championship game, yes.”