Students wait in line outside the Schottenstein Center to pick up season football tickets.  Credit: Hayden Grove / Sports director at Lantern TV

Students wait in line outside the Schottenstein Center to pick up season football tickets.
Credit: Hayden Grove / Sports director at Lantern TV

In the 90-plus degree Columbus heat, Ohio State students lined the Schottenstein Center concourse one after another. But it wasn’t the Black Keys concert scheduled for Friday evening drawing the students to the arena.

Instead, the students packed the walkway waiting to pick up their OSU football tickets on the eve of the Buckeyes’ home opener against Virginia Tech on Saturday night.

With student tickets available for pickup much earlier in the summer, there seemed to be one prominent reason for the long line during rush hour Friday.

“Procrastination,” said Grant Nair, a first-year student in mechanical engineering.

Nair wasn’t the only one to use that word.

“People are procrastinating,” said Christina Shea, a fifth-year in sociology and Spanish.

While both used “procrastination” to explain the lengthy lines, Nair admitted he too was part of the problem.

“Throughout the entire week, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll find a day,’” Nair said. “And then you just think you have better things to do, so you don’t make it down here.”

Whether it was procrastination or a laundry list of other reasons for the line — including work, class and ignorance surrounding the place of pickup — there was another common theme that echoed throughout the line: a willingness to wait.

After waiting 40 minutes to get to the front of the line, Tim Parana, a third-year in biology, said, “I’d wait as long as it takes because there’s nothing like Buckeye games.”

“(I’d wait) as long as I had to,” said Alex Wieneke, a first-year in business, as he entered his 46th minute of waiting.

Nair chimed in as well.

“I’d probably wait a couple of hours for these tickets,” Nair said.

Unfortunately for the willing waiters, they were not permitted to pick up their tickets following the 5 p.m. closing of the Schottenstein Center box office. They were instead instructed to return to pick up their tickets starting at noon on Saturday.