Bill Hutton and his wife, Lisa Lugar, won’t be table hosts at the Kansas University Alumni Association’s fancy Rock Chalk Ball fund-raiser next year in Overland Park.

They’ve taken down their Jayhawk flags. And they won’t be watching KU men’s basketball games on television anymore.

They’re mad.

“You can tell the Endowment Association and the Williams Fund and the law school they can quit calling us. We won’t be giving to KU anymore,” said Hutton, who graduated from KU law school in 1979.

Hutton and Lugar are seething over the KU Athletic Corp.’s decision last summer to force some men’s basketball season ticket holders to pay from $5,000 to $10,000 to hold onto their prime seats in Allen Fieldhouse.

The controversy and legal battles over the new season ticket regime, which athletic officials say is a must to assure programs are well-financed, continue to percolate. And even as longtime fans are pledging to cut the university out of their wills, the Athletic Corp. is considering still more changes for next year that are sure to enrage more of the most devoted Jayhawk supporters.

More controversy ahead

Jim Marchiony, associate director of athletics at KU, said that “in all probability” KU next year will switch to a season ticket system based on points earned by the amount of donations made, longevity and interest in other KU sports.

It, too, will be controversial, he predicted — at least for a while.

“The concerns we’re hearing now and that we will be hearing in the future are expressed at every institution that institutes a point system,” Marchiony said. “And after about a year the complaints die down as people come to realize that this is the way things are going to be if, in this case, the University of Kansas, is going to continue to provide its student athletes with opportunities to compete on the national level.”

Allen Fieldhouse is packed for a game against Texas A&M in this February file photo. As a lawsuit continues on whether the Kansas University Athletic Corp. may demand thousands of dollars for premium seats, changes in the works for next year are sure to enrage more of the Jayhawk faithful.

He added: “Whether people like it or not, that’s a fact of life — we need to raise more money from private sources because that support has to be there and it’s not going to come from the taxpayers of the state of Kansas.”

Marchiony declined to confirm persistent rumors that each seat in the prime seating area next year would require a minimum $5,000 donation.

“The truth is that we’re just now beginning to have the very beginning discussions as to how all this is going to work,” he said last week. “In fact, those discussions start next week.”

What happened

¢ Woodling: Kansas showing disregard for retirees (9-23-03)¢ Woodling: Perkins puts spurs to change (9-03-03)¢ Text of Perkins’ letter to Kansas University athletic donors (9-03-03)¢ Perkins: Points apply to faculty (9-06-03)¢ KU’s Perkins eyeing priority seating plan (8-29-03)¢ KU wins 1st round of ticket squabble (7-31-03)¢ 6News video: Williams Fund season ticket dispute continues (7-31-03)¢ KU plan blackmail, ticket holders testify (7-26-03)¢ Take a stand: Kansas athletics joins the big time (7-6-03)¢ Season-ticket holders sue to hang on to seats (7-1-03)¢ Lawsuit to challenge KU ticket policy (6-28-03)¢ 6News video: Season ticket holders will file lawsuit about ticket prices¢ KU fans must pay $5,000 to keep their seats (6-7-03)¢ 6News video: Season ticket holders to shell out $5,000 to keep seats¢ Virtual Allen Fieldhouse¢ How to get tickets¢ KU men’s basketball¢ KU women’s basketball

In June, KUAC and Williams Fund officials sent letters to 121 season-ticket holders who had fallen behind on their payments or were not fund members, letting them know their tickets were in jeopardy and encouraging them to contact the fund office.

When they called, the ticket holders were told they would have to put up $5,000 to keep two seats, $10,000 for four.

Hutton’s father-in-law, Jim Lugar of Kansas City, Kan., had four seats — ninth and 10th rows, across from the visiting team’s bench — but was not a Williams Fund member. Jim Lugar and his wife shared two of the tickets with their daughter and son-in-law.

“We’ve had season tickets since 1968 or 1969, I can’t remember which,” said 63-year-old Jim Lugar.

Told he had to put up $10,000 to keep the four tickets, Lugar refused.

“I don’t have that kind of money, but that’s not what bothers me,” Lugar said. “What bothers me is that I’m being told I have to pay $10,000 to keep four seats when I’m 99 percent certain that a lot of the people by us had never been asked to put up that kind of money.

“So we’re being told that because they put $200 in the Williams Fund they get to keep their seats — and we have to pay $10,000 to keep ours? How is that fair? How is that equal treatment under the law?” Lugar said.

Lawsuit continues

Jim Lugar, a lawyer, is one of four plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Williams Fund’s edict.

“I have a hard time believing that the way this was handled is legal,” he said. “There’s a big difference between telling people they have to put up $200 or $5,000.”

In July, Douglas County District Court Judge Jack Murphy denied the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order. Murphy cited Wichita State University v. Marrs, a 2001 case in which the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled season tickets were licenses solely controlled by their respective athletic corporations, which are free to require upfront contributions.

The ruling did not put an end to the lawsuit.

“We’ve filed discovery motions to get (KUAC) to provide information as to how all this was initiated, how it was implemented — and we want to see an accounting of who got the notices and how they were handled,” said Brock Snyder, the Topeka attorney who filed the initial lawsuit.

“I think this is going to go to trial because I think there are some differences in what happened in the Wichita State case and what happened here,” he said.

Whose decision?

KU Athletic Corp. has retained Foulston Siefkin, a prestigious Wichita law firm, as legal counsel. It’s filed motions asking Murphy to dismiss the case outright.

Currently, both sides are responding to each other’s motions. A date for deciding whether the case will proceed has not been set.

Apart from the legal wrangling, KUAC officials defend the policy, noting that anyone who couldn’t come up with $5,000 or $10,000 was given the option of buying an equal number of tickets outside the prime seating area.

“No one who had a season ticket was denied a season ticket,” Marchiony said. “The decision to renew or not to renew was theirs to make.”

Out of the 121 ticket holders asked to put up $5,000 or $10,000, he said, 76 complied.

“A lot of them said they’d never been asked,” Marchiony said, adding that “about 20” opted for lesser seats. An additional “20 or so” chose not to renew.

Whether the controversy turns out to be a public relations nightmare for KU or a tempest in a teapot remains to be seen.

Out of the will

Frank Godding, a retired Topeka architect and plaintiff in the lawsuit, has made his sentiments known.

“I’ve had my trust rewritten so that when I die, KU or the Williams Fund won’t be getting anything,” he said.

Godding declined to say how much the trust was worth. “I won’t tell you that because in my mind, that would amount to me blackmailing them,” he said. “They’ve blackmailed me, but I’ll not blackmail them.”

He was one of those who dismissed the offer of lesser seats.

“The seats they offered were way up in the very tip top row over in one of the corners,” Godding said. “There’s no way I could make it up there. I’m 81 years old and I have a bad heart.”

‘Terrible backlash’

The controversy goes beyond Godding and his fellow plaintiffs.

“Oh, God, this is a huge. It’s probably the No. 1 or 2 issue being discussed among faculty now,” said Bill Tuttle, KU professor in American Studies who has been a member of the KUAC governing board for the past six years.

Tuttle said KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins had notified the faculty it would be allotted a yet-to-be-determined number of tickets next year.

“How those tickets will be divvied up hasn’t been decided, but it’s becoming clear that faculty whose seats are in the prime seating area are going to be asked to put up $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever,” Tuttle said. “Now, there are some faculty that can afford that, but there are many that can’t. As this unfolds, there’s going to be a terrible backlash.”

Tuttle said he and others on the governing board had been frustrated by the Williams Fund controversy.

“We didn’t know it was going to happen,” he said. “It wasn’t run by us.”

Marchiony, who, along with Perkins arrived after the policy took effect, conceded that, in retrospect, mistakes were made.

“If we could go back, we would have called people first before sending them a letter,” he said. “But what was done needed to be done.”

Hutton said the new ticket requirements flew in the face of fairness.

“Look, I have no problem with them needing money,” Hutton, 49, said. “And if the decision was to make everybody pay more, I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. But that’s not what they did, they created a disparity and that, to us, just flies in the face of what we thought KU is about — or is supposed to be about.”