Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard appeared on 106.3 KXNO’s Murph & Andy show Tuesday afternoon to address concerns of the ticketing situation at Jack Trice Stadium that left a number of fans without a viable path into the stadium for the entirety of the first quarter.
Pollard started by explaining that Iowa State currently employs 500 less people to its Game Day staff than it did during games in the 2019 season.
“We need people to work and since COVID, we’ve been down about 40% on people that want to work on game days,” Pollard said. “We have to employ about 1200 part-time people on a home football game (day), and we lost about 40% of our workforce, (which leaves) nearly 500 Less people working. So it just helps staff the parking lots and staff all the ticket areas.”
Pollard said that Iowa State would be removing turnstiles and bringing people that are struggling by the gates to assist them in finding their tickets in an effort to mitigate things Saturday.
Pollard also noted that from people he had personally talked to, those who had arrived at the gates by 12:30 p.m. CT – 30 minutes before the scheduled start to the game – did not have issues entering the stadium.
“Well, you know the Cy-Hawk is always a little more amped up,” Pollard said. “I would, as a fan, try to be in by 1:45 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. at the latest. Anybody at Saturday’s (game) that got in before 12:30 p.m. said they didn’t know there was even a problem. People that came after 12:30 p.m. clearly ran into problems.”
It was announced on Tuesday, as well, that former president Donald Trump would be present at the game on Saturday, as well.
Despite the increased security presence and concerns around the ticketing situation, Pollard was not overtly worried about the potential of added traffic surrounding Trump.
“We’ve long had the challenge here because whenever (the Cy-Hawk) game has been played, and I’m assuming the same about Iowa City, in an election year, all the politicians want to come grandstand and be able to be front and center in front of all of the Iowans that attend this game… Some of these candidates have pretty big entourage and security detail. And so yeah, those are some challenges for us. But you know, it’s not our first rodeo dealing with them.”
Trump also came to the event in 2015.
“That’s something that (our) police work heavily with their people,” Pollard said. “They have to be inside the stadium and they don’t get any special favors. They don’t get any special passes. If they’re gonna be in a suite, somebody’s got to have their tickets. That goes for all candidates.”
Fans wanting to watch the game on TV can see it live on FOX on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
