UT-Alabama Football Tickets - Only $4!

...in 1952

The University of Tennessee, like many colleges, is struggling during the pandemic to support the over-sized budget of its athletics department, in particular its football program.

The current solution, proposed in a recent email to season ticket holders, is that they donate the money they have already sent in for their tickets.

(There was no mention of any coach taking a pay cut.)

That will make up only a tiny portion of the gushing losses caused by the pandemic.

All the hand-wringing over ticket sales reminded me that I have a ticket application for Tennessee’s 1952 football season.

There were six home games at Shield-Watkins Field, beginning Oct. 11 with a game against Chattanooga and concluding six weeks later with a contest against the University of Kentucky.

Tickets for Chattanooga and a later game against Wofford were priced at $3. The other four games, which included Alabama and Florida, were $4 per seat. There was a 50 cent postage charge for each ticket.

Tennessee was coming off one of its most successful seasons, a 10-1 record, “consensus National Champions” and co-champions of the Southeastern Conference.

The only loss was a 28-13 Sugar Bowl game against third ranked Maryland. UT retained its national championship designation became the polls then closed after the regular season and before the bowl games.

An Alabama ticket for $4? Sounds dirt cheap but was it?

The usual way to compare prices is to plug $4 into an inflation calculator to see what that would be in 2020 dollars (It would be $125).

But I think it is more interesting to see what else you could buy in 1952 for that $4.

So I found a Sept. 1952 ad for Kingsport’s Cut Rate grocery, an early supermarket located at 440 East Sullivan (not far from Five Points).

A 25-pound bag of White Rose flour was $1.69. You could buy two of those – that’s a lot of flour – and have enough left over for a 16-oz T-bone steak.

Or you could buy 8 pounds of 80 percent lean hamburger.

Head over to produce. You could load up for $4: 3 pounds of bananas cost 29 cents. 3 pounds of green beans came in at 25 cents. A 5-lb. bag of yellow onions was 39 cents. We’re not even to a dollar and we have bananas, green beans and onions.

A jumbo honey dew melon was 49 cents. A No. 2 tin of cherries – enough for a cherry pie – was 19 cents. Add a 46-oz. tin of grapefruit juice for 19 cents and we still aren’t up to $2.

Catsup was 18 cents, margarine was 35 cents and a box of vanilla wafers was 29 cents. We are still under $3.

Finish up with an 8-pound pail of lard – every cook’s friend in ’52 – and we have $4 worth of groceries.

Of course today you could get all that and a lot more for the $124 current dollar value of an Alabama ticket.

So maybe those ’52 tickets weren’t so cheap after all.

 

Bonus post

Ancestry.com gave me a free week of access to its yearbook collection. So of course I used the time to look up old (girl)friends.

And also Cybill Shepherd.

She was never a girlfriend but she went to Memphis East with a college friend of mine.

So here’s a bonus post of Cybill, future star of “The Last Picture Show” and many other films.

Please note Cybill won first place in the Memphis East Science Fair but didn’t win first in the Homecoming Queen contest.