by Jeremy Hunt and
Hayley McCullough
Daily Lobo
University Stadium will never see a crowd as large as the one at the football game against NMSU two weeks ago.
The Athletics Department announced it will no longer sell tickets for the standing-only area on the east rim of the stadium. The department said it made the changes for safety reasons.
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"We just want to provide a safe environment for everyone," said Greg Remington, spokesman for the department. "It becomes almost unmanageable with the standing room only."
The NMSU game wasn't the deciding factor to stop selling standing-room only tickets, Remington said. He said the Athletics Department constantly evaluates the safety of University Stadium and decided it was in the best interest of attendees.
However, he said the NMSU game was Athletics Director Paul Krebs' first experience with a crowd that size at the stadium.
"He just felt the potential for a bad situation is just not worth selling the standing room only tickets," he said.
The 41,033-person attendance at the game against NMSU was the fourth largest in the stadium's history.
About 700 standing-room only tickets were sold for that game, Remington said.
Student Audrianna Stone said she would not go to another football game because of her experience at the NMSU game.
Stone said she was caught in the middle of an out-of-control mob with her mother and her friend, who is a wheelchair user.
"The crowd started pushing our friend into the concrete wall," she said. "I don't know if it was because everybody was drunk or because there were too many people, but people were fighting and throwing punches, and there was no one to help."
Stone said she was hit on the head and neck by people using their elbows to push through the swarm of people.
She said she wasn't able to walk for more than two weeks because her foot was injured as she made her way through the crowd.
The biggest problem with the crowd was that people with general admission tickets were trying to get into reserved seating, said Lt. Pat Davis, spokesman for the UNM
Police.
"We had a few thousand people trying to get into a few hundred seats," Davis said.
UNM Police also didn't expect 11,000 people to buy tickets on game day, he said.
"For the next few games, we're going to anticipate those size crowds," he said.
Davis said the department made changes to how it directs fans at the football games.
The game against Sacramento State last week was smoother than the game against NMSU, he said.
Student Ashley Kraft said it was a good decision to stop selling standing-room only tickets.
Kraft said the crowd was wild at the NMSU game.
"People were getting trampled, and there was a riot," she said. "If they were to sell tickets for seats only, we wouldn't have issues with the safety of the people."
Student Ashley Bonner said the change is a bad idea.
"I don't think it's a safety hazard," she said. "People are already jammed into the bleachers. Some extra people standing aren't going to hurt anyone."
