The hockey and basketball seasons for Boston University have been finished for several weeks now, which means that when it isn’t raining (or snowing), the focus turns to spring sports. And even though the weather has hardly been cooperative, spring makes me think about finally getting to watch Terrier sporting events in the beautiful outdoors.

The great thing about games at BU’s outdoor facilities like Nickerson Field is that you can simply head down to West Campus a few minutes before a lacrosse or softball game and sit down and enjoy. There’s no need for pre-purchased tickets, fighting through crowds or for getting to the games hours beforehand to get a mediocre seat.

And the best part about Terrier spring sports is that there’s no need for BU’s infamous (and ridiculous) Sports Pass.

Before I came to school last fall, I explored the university’s website and discovered this supreme ticket that promised to get me into all athletic events. After sending BU my family’s life savings, I imagined that I would receive some sort of holy card in the mail, which I would be able to just flash at ushers to get into hockey games.

But no magical sporting card ever came in the mail, and I soon found out what the Sports Pass really is. Nothing.

The idea for it is certainly a good one – a universal ticket that gets you into all of BU’s sporting events, as long as you agree to pay the $85 fee the university tacks onto your bill. But I don’t have a problem with the price tag. My argument is with the way BU sets up the Sports Pass program.

First of all, it’s not really a universal ticket at all. The Sports Pass is only required for men’s and women’s hockey and basketball games. And while ticket distribution is important for the popular men’s home hockey games, the rest of the system is just a little silly.

Everyone knows that the attendance for women’s basketball and hockey games is extremely low, and finding a seat for a men’s basketball game at the Roof was only mildly difficult maybe one time toward the season’s end. But even so, the athletic department requires that all student spectators go through the Sports Pass process to get into those games.

Granted, waiting in a short line and then showing your ID card to get a ticket is not exactly a strenuous ordeal, but I still think the program could be improved. My first suggestion would be to simply get rid of the Sports Pass requirement for all women’s basketball and hockey games. I’m hoping the men’s basketball team will become popular enough in the future so that we won’t need to throw them into the same category.

But that only solves half of the problem. To completely fix the Sports Pass system, the process for getting men’s hockey and basketball tickets needs to change as well. I’m not some crazy environmentalist, but it seems stupid to me for Agganis Arena to print off thousands of student tickets for winter sporting events, only to have them used for a second and then thrown away.

Why not save paper and energy by making the process electronic like everything else at this university? If we swipe our ID cards to get into FitRec, then why don’t we swipe our ID cards to get into basketball games? For those of us who signed up for it, the Sports Pass is automatically programmed into our cards, which means that an electronic ticket program wouldn’t be too difficult to create.

And assuming that the athletic department and Agganis are sensitive to wasting paper and money, it makes perfect sense to do away with physical tickets for students. The card-swiping idea would take care of this, but at the same time, it would still force students to show up early for big games to get a seat.

That brings me to my other alternative – which is basically for BU to adopt the process that Ticketmaster has been using for several years. When you buy a ticket to a Celtics game or a major concert, Ticketmaster gives you the option of receiving your ticket via email.

If Agganis Arena used this program for students, it would be able to print less physical tickets and would speed up the Sports Pass process tremendously. Imagine being able to order and print out your hockey tickets online without having to hike down to the arena in nasty weather. Because BU students already register for classes and vote for candidates on the Student Link website, I don’t see why sports tickets should be any different.

And in case you’re concerned that building a website like Ticketmaster for BU would be too big of a project, don’t even worry a bit. Agganis Arena already sells tickets to the general public through the Ticketmaster website (that’s how I got my front row seats to Australian Pink Floyd), so I doubt adding a student feature would be very difficult at all.

But if BU does decide to utilize my plan, it certainly will be hard to say goodbye to my invisible Sports Pass . . . not!

Bennett Gavrish, a freshman in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].