Free Final Four tix for Houston Athletes?

[PonyTime]

If I were Chase Keenum - I would not be talking to the media about receiveing free tickets to the fianl four...

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/Houston-Rice-students-get-to-experience-nationa?urn=ncaab-wp1856

I saw the clever Rice sign "Rice Owls - We didn't make the final four - but Neither did Texas"

Pathetic that they had to bribe people to root for UCONN...enjoy the Big East horned frogs - I am sure UCONN will pack DMC even though they could not get more than 500 UCONN fans to buy tickets to the National Championship game in Houston.

[smudubs]

This is amazing in light of fact that they lost a ton of money with the BCS game. We often complain about our fans, but I'm pretty sure that if SMU made it the national championship game, more than 300 of our students would show up.

[RGV Pony]

as mentioned over on the bball board, it looked like there were 20k Kentucky fans, a couple thousand Butler fans, 5,000 or so VCU fans, and UConn couldnt have had more than 500 on Saturday..the rest were 'unattached'

[CalallenStang]

Apparently Houston and Rice students were allowed to get free UConn student section tickets.

[SMUguy]

It's all part of an elaborate plot to misplace blame. UConn gives CASE Keenum and some other Rice and Cougar High students free tickets, and in exchange, UH and Rice get to take the blame for paying that kid (who has Calhoun in hot water). Improprieties all around, and nobody can get blamed on their own campus.

Genius!

[PonyTime]

What I find most interesting about this is that the Rice student body was offered these tix by the athletic department, yet the story seems to suggest that the UH athletic department only offered the tickets to athletes.

Rice - Smart athletic department. No NCAA violations.

UH - Not so smart atletic department. NCAA violations.