There has been talk throughout the week about the number of tickets available for Saturday's Louisville/Kentucky football game. For any tickets to be available so close to a U of L/UK game is an extreme rarity, but that number being in the several thousands is almost unheard of.
With this news spreading, the Big Blue Nation party line quickly became "well that's because Louisville sent back a large number of its allotted tickets." I thought it was unlikely, a notion that was confirmed when a few of the powers that be at U of L denied the rumor yesterday.
With this knowledge in hand, I was surprised to see a line in Eric Crawford's column this morning blaming part of the "poor" ticket sales on Louisville sending back a portion of its allotment. Turns out some people at U of L were too.
Crawford issued the following correction earlier today:
We have a standard procedure here for issuing corrections, but I wanted to take another step on an error that appeared in my column Friday morning. I reported that the University of Louisville returned a portion of its ticket allotment for tomorrow’s football game at the University of Kentucky. That is not the case. U of L athletic department officials said this morning that they have sold their entire allotment, as they have since the series began.
As with all such mistakes, the responsibility lies with the reporter. The error was mine. I apologize for it, and given the nature of the rivalry and how everything in it is magnified, just thought the correction deserved some magnification, as well.
Kudos to Eric for not only making the correction, but for drawing attention to it (he's posted links on both Facebook and Twitter). And, of course, kudos to U of L fans for gobbling up their share of tickets to Saturday's game.