EDITORIAL: What does it mean to be a sports fan? For some, it’s watching every game and knowing the roster inside and out. For others, it might mean keeping up with the social lives of the players they think are cute. Can you just be from a place and show up to a bar when the playoffs start? Sure, why not. While all these people may be at different levels of fandom, most of them have one thing in common: they own a jersey. For the University of Maine’s hockey program, this tradition has become too expensive.
The most basic and recognized way of showing your support to a team is owning a jersey; it’s synonymous with fandom. For many UMaine college students, this sign of support has become exorbitantly priced. A standard replica jersey is $129.99. This is the jersey that looks like the ones players wear on the ice.
If you want to save money and get a cheaper option, one that doesn’t look like the one your team wears, you can get one of those for only $20 less, at $109.99. However, if you want one with an actual player’s name on it — you know, something that is pretty normal for a jersey to have — you are looking at around $260.
There are a good number of students who just bite the bullet and buy one because they love their community more than they hate the price tag, but the fact of the matter is, it’s unacceptable.
The college experience, while filled with lots of joy and foundational life moments, has a lot of costs. Tuition, room and board, textbooks and all the other ordinary living expenses are things college students have to think about. I mean, there’s the term “broke college kid” for a reason. To ask students who are already up to their necks in expenses to spend $130 to $250 to purchase a sports jersey is one of clearest examples of greed and exploitation we have seen in our time at college.
While the thought of bringing down prices of UMaine hockey jerseys is completely sound, it’s unrealistic. However, a possible solution for this, one that is at least somewhat feasiable, would be to give every incoming first-year class a one-time discount on a UMaine jersey or any other UMaine apparel item at the bookstore.
This would not be a challenging thing to implement. Giving students coupons is something the university has done before and could easily do again. It would go a long way in showing a sense of care for students and their culture.
The exact percentage of the discount, like the concept as a whole, will be up to the university. However, it would be nice to see it in the 30% to 50% range. We think this is a perfectly reasonable compromise to a ridiculous situation.
We know that prices will never come down, but kids coming into the college experience and the rich traditions of UMaine — hockey games being chief among them — deserve an opportunity to buy a jersey at a reasonable price.
