Crispin Powley knew he was in some trouble. He just didn’t realize the depth of his own desperation.
He thought he could turn his own misfortune into a chance to help out a friend and dig himself out of a hole.
On Sunday, he jumped the gun and purchased a pair of tickets to the Music City Bowl for $250 before the matchup was decided. The 42-year-old fishing lure designer drives five hours from his home in Camden, Tenn., for every Tennessee home game, but the only bowl he’d ever attended was the 2016 Music City Bowl. Now, Tennessee was back, and Powley was going to make a return of his own.
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Instead, despite initial reports that said otherwise, Tennessee ended up in the Gator Bowl against Indiana in Jacksonville, Fla., and Powley was stuck with rapidly depreciating tickets. He called up a family of Mississippi State fans he knows with an offer for a pair of tickets to see the Bulldogs take on Louisville in Nashville.
“They laughed,” Powley said. “And said I’m about the 10th person that they personally know that called them in the same situation.”
Tennessee’s unpredictable 48 hours inside the bowl-selection bubble, during which it expressed a desire to play in the Music City Bowl before pivoting to the Gator Bowl, were a wild ride for everyone involved. Kentucky and Mississippi State found themselves pulled from one bowl to another. The Music City Bowl was left gripping with the reality that it had little to no hope of selling out a game that looked like a sure sellout when the Vols went to sleep on Saturday almost certainly heading to Nashville.
But Tennessee fans who followed the saga on Sunday too closely with a finger on the “Buy Now” button are stuck footing a bill for tickets they’re struggling to give away, much less resell to recoup at least a portion of their losses.
“I would love to know what the total amount of wasted money by Tennessee fans is over this,” Powley said.
Two Music City Bowl officials didn’t respond to a request for comment or an estimate of how many Tennessee fans purchased tickets before the bowl lineup was finalized on Sunday.
Corey Gutgsell hasn’t made it to any Tennessee games this year, but he planned on breaking that streak with an easy trip to Nashville in December.
The 48-year-old bail bondsman in Jackson, Tenn., a small town midway between Memphis and Nashville that’s coincidentally Trey Smith’s hometown, too, has three kids in college and a 7-year-old, and he recently moved to the state from St. Louis. His wife is the real Tennessee fan in the household, a Tennessee native who’s turned her husband into a Vols fan by sheer power of will and a death grip on the remote on fall Saturdays.
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But he’d never been to a bowl game before.
“That’s why we were so excited,” Gutgsell said.
He woke up on Sunday and read the reports that Tennessee’s bowl game was locked in and decided to go, even though it had not been announced yet.
He bought a pair of tickets in Row A in Section 111, on the 40-yard line. His tickets were $200 each, and he nearly bought another pair of tickets next to him, assuming it would be easy to find another pair of Vols fans interested in seeing Tennessee finish its season inside state lines.
“We figured it would be a great opportunity to snag good seats,” said Gutgsell, who’s used Smith as his own entryway to develop a love of a program he once considered foreign. “I mean, we’re right on the field. But the whole thing has just become a calamity of errors.”
He and his family tuned into the ESPN show at 3 p.m. believing Tennessee’s bowl game would be announced, but even after the Vols didn’t show up on the program reserved for announcing New Year’s Six games, they saw on social media that Tennessee was heading for the Music City Bowl.
“I didn’t think in a million years they would change bowls. I didn’t understand the process, to start with. I thought they were selected for bowls. I didn’t know it was such a fluid process,” Gutgsell said. “Now, there’s thousands of tickets available. Prices have plummeted. I mean, I’ll give my tickets to you if you want ’em.”
For the next 90 minutes, Gutgsell hoped the rumors of a switch weren’t true, but after learning they were, he posted his tickets on StubHub and has dropped the price three times.
“I’ve got them down to like 125 bucks apiece now and I still don’t have any interest,” he said.
Matt Chambers, a 36-year-old who lives in Florence, Ala., and works for the Department of the Army, had just left church on Sunday when he checked his phone and saw multiple reports that Tennessee would play in Nashville. A trip from Florence to Knoxville takes more than five hours, but Nashville is less than three hours away, so he jumped at the chance because he rarely is able to make it to Knoxville for more than a handful of events each year.
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“I live in Alabama and I drive a Tennessee orange Dodge,” he said.
His wife warned him he might want to wait. Fearing a price jump when demand peaked later in the day, he pounced.
Chambers bought three front-row tickets in Section 101, and he felt like he’d come away with a steal for the $397 price tag.
Later that day, he got home and logged onto the bowl website and saw advertisements for Mississippi State versus Louisville. He was confused and called Ticketmaster in hopes of getting a refund.
“They told me they can’t do anything about it and now I’m stuck with three tickets for a game I’m not going to go to,” Chambers said. “The announcements were coming from people with the blue check (verified users on social media), though, you know? That was a done deal, and all the predictions from the night before were saying Music City Bowl, so once I saw it, I pulled the trigger.”
He’s posted his tickets on Facebook Marketplace in the Starkville and Louisville areas with no luck, besides a few spam emails that were less than convincing. He’s also posted them on Ticketmaster’s resale board but hasn’t gotten any nibbles on unloading the tickets that rapidly depreciated in value.
“It’s pretty frustrating. It sucks,” Chambers said. “I’m sitting here out $400 and wondering if I’m going to get any of it back.”
Lucas Schropshier, a 26-year-old Knoxville native who moved to Nashville in April and works as a bartender, bought his tickets in hopes of seeing his first Tennessee game of the year and his first bowl game. That’s not happening anymore.
He paid $200 for his tickets, and his disappointment only worsened when, like many Tennessee fans, he’s had no luck reselling, either.
“If I wouldn’t have bought those tickets, I’d have been pumped for the Gator Bowl. That’s where I was banking on the whole time. But now, since I bought tickets and I live here in Nashville, I’m just bummed out, to be honest,” Schropshier said. “A little bit pissed off, too. I’m glad we got a better bowl, but I was mad, just like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ ”
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Those experiences are not uncommon among Tennessee fans just looking to get a jump on a market that was sure to balloon if the red-hot Vols, winners of five consecutive games to reach their first bowl game since 2016, played their postseason game within the state.
“I saw some people I follow on Twitter had asked how many people actually ordered tickets, and there were like 20 or 30 people where I was just sitting there counting the responses like, ‘Wow.’ I didn’t know who any of them were,” Chambers said, “but there was a bunch.”
Sunday’s misinformation cost Tennessee fans plenty of money they’ll likely not recoup, with no recourse for a refund and nothing to do but count it as a lesson learned.
Next year, they’ll be a little slower on the draw.
“Let’s say I’m just trying to be the early bird and I take a shot in the dark because I believe that’s where we’re going,” Powley said. “That’s one thing. That’s on me. But when somebody announces it’s official, I’m not going to call anybody out because I believe in forgiveness and second chances and I’m going to live my life that way. But I will tell you, I will not put as much stock into their breaking news going forward after this incident. Everybody’s entitled to mistakes, but I feel like it was a competition to break something before everybody else to the point of recklessness. …
“I’m not happy about it. But it’s not the end of the world. When you’re a source of information and that’s what you call yourself and what your job is, you’re only as good as your information. And when you give people information and make them invest hundreds of dollars for nothing, you take a hit to your credibility. That’s kind of where I’m at.”
(Photo: Randy Sartin / USA Today)
