Basketball brouhaha: Tarheel fan booted for wearing blue in Cav zone

.......but King Ralph is still "King"? "King" of what?

Perhaps a move to another "kingdom" is in order........

@ TJ - Please don't offend anyone who suffered through segregation by comparing this to racial profiling. Just like the other Tim said, you agree to the terms of the ticket when you purchase it, and it's not a right to sit and do whatever you please. You offend me.

Are you frickin' kidding me?

You have absolutely no constitutional right to sit where one chooses no matter what you paid for your ticket. Look at the back of any ticket you've ever bought for any event. They can even kick you out of the arena without any cause. By using the ticket you agree to those terms.

What U.Va. did was well within their rights and, like I said, a lot nicer than what would have been done at a lot of other schools. He still had better seats than 90% of the people in the arena.

newsobserver- "But he didn't have time to remove his light blue coat before a man asked to see his ticket. The man told him he had on the wrong colors."

At least he didn't HE was the wrong color................

I say that you can sit where you want to no matter what team you are rooting for just be prepared for the heckling you will be getting from the other fans

If you are going to be a real newspaper, how about actually writing an article Hook? You guys do this at least once a week. Use someone else work and place it on your website. Lazy and really lame.

Read the back of a ticket, they can move you/boot you for anything. It's like an orange and blue communist arena and the same as any other one.

John William:

you can wear whatever you want to the women's basketball games. The 3 people in attendance will all be over the age of 60 and thus too old to do anything about your wardrobe.

can you read? he was not thrown out, just give another lower level seat.

@tim. Thanx for the insight. sorry to agitate you so much. People like me don't really care. Am more of a Cav fan vs Tarheel anyhoos

The athletic department does not receive any state money, for anything. It is completely separate from the rest of the university. The arena, and all other athletic facilities, was built with private donations.

To me there are two different questions here.

The first one is whether UVA had the legal right to move this fan. To which, the answer is absolutely yes.

The followup question is whether UVA should have moved the fan. This one is up to some interpretation and personal opinion. The section the fan was in is used for official UVA guests, such as families and recruits. You absolutely do not want opposing fans in the section, for both competitive and respect reasons. Personally i feel that it was better to remove him as soon as you see he is an opposing fan and not wait to see if they say/do something offensive, otherwise people scream free speech etc. So ultimately I support moving the fan, especially considering UVA gave him the best seat available. Scalping a ticket is always a risk.

It appears that most if not all other major sports schools follow similar policies, so it isn't like UVA is going out on their own here. That said, it definitely looks bad and leaves the bad taste in the mouth of the fan who was moved, so additional steps should be taken to prevent it from happening in the future. Right now it seems like UVA basically says you can give the tickets way, but you are responsible for who gets them. So UVA should suspend the original recipients ability to get these tickets. They should also require that ticket holders enter through a specific gate that has a predetermined list of people who can use the tickets. This way if you want to give the tickets away you need to get the persons name on a list. This would prevent ticket holders from selling the tickets to unknown people.

I've seen this story linked in a dozen places and I've yet to figure out why it is news. Most schools would do a similar thing (if not worse), and tickets purchased from a scalper should always be considered "buyer beware."

Perhaps if it were anywhere other than the seats right behind the bench (which are designated for certain people), this would be news. But as it stands, it's not.

Sounds like segregation to me, and in honor of Martin Luther King Day, in the name of cross cultural exchange, let's all sit together no matter what color we wear.

Plessy v Ferguson (163 U.S. 537), 1896
In the 1890's, Louisiana law provided for separate rail cars for whites and non-whites � the cars were the same, but only whites could sit in the white cars, and only blacks in the black cars. When two cars were not available, single cars were split by partition. Fines and imprisonment were provided for when a person sat in the wrong car. Plessy, a mixed-race man, was required to sit in the non-white car; when he refused, he was ejected from the car and arrested. Plessy appealed his conviction on the basis that he was not a colored person, but also on the allegation that the act was unconstitutional under the 13th and 14th Amendments. The Court disagreed, and for the next 60 years, "separate but equal" was the norm in much of America.

Give me a break - this really is non-news. Most other teams that value their home-court advantage would do the same thing, and Duke admitted it. Carolina is being ridiculous if they say they wouldn't do the same. The real story here is the person who sold their tickets to the scalper who has no compunction as to whom they ultimately get sold. There are plenty of outlets to make sure Wahoo tickets get sold to Wahoo fans.

Jason Bauman handled the situation in an appropriate, civilized manner.