Holiday Greetings From West Lafayette!

When I came home from work today, I found that I'd received an unexpected early Christmas gift in the mail; a "thank you" note from OMHR's ticket office for our purchase of 30-odd seats to the laugh-fest that was the Iowa/Purdue football game. Our pleasant, if not entirely reliable, ticket agent wrote me the following:

Dear Group Leader Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.

On behalf of Purdue Athletics, thank you for your football group ticket purchase to a Boilermaker home football game this fall. Holy shit, I can't believe you bought tickets to watch this horror show. Have they not invented "fun" where you live? You're the type of person who buys Shake Weights and Amish Fireplaces off of late-night television, aren't you? On the plus side, the funds from your transaction will go towards supplying local children with Slap Bracelets, Scrunchies and other fads that have just arrived in West Lafayette.

The season was filled with lots of exciting games, including beating Illinois and Ohio State. The season's "high points" were akin to having drunk sex with your cousin but avoiding impregnation and punching your dad in the nuts, respectively.

I am proud to say that we are going "bowling," with our first bowl game appearance since 2007. The Boilermakers will take on the Western Michigan University Broncos at the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in Detroit on Dec. 27! Due to our desperate financial situation we have been required to accept an invitation to go "bowling" in a city that may or may not currently be incorporated or even inhabited, against a school that quite possibly only offers classes via correspondence. I am required to put the word "bowling" in quotes so that none of you get too excited over the prospect of visiting an actual bowling alley.

Tickets are available online at purduesports.com or by calling our Athletic Ticket Office at 1-800-49-SPORT. If your dial-up connection is fast enough, you can buy tickets through our website using such browsers as Netscape or America Online. However, it would be awfully nice if you just called to break up the monotony of my day. If you concentrate really hard, my voice may remind you of a less-hoarse Mayim Bialik.

Although we have not put the wraps on 2011, we are already looking ahead and are excited about next year's possibilities. This season is technically still going the way that brain-dead patients on life support are still alive. You likely won't even know when next year has begun.

If you have any feedback from your experience with group sales, positive or negative, please let me know. Feel free to leave comments about your experience so long as they are not complaints regarding the poor quality of our team, ineptitude of our coaches, emptiness of our stadium, stupidity of our chants, undrinkablility of our water, or any other facet of the typical Purdue gameday experience.

I am working on the group sales plan for the 2012 football season and am excited to introduce new initiatives to our fans. Look for Group Sales to release a schedule and special values this spring. There's really nothing I can do to make next year any more appealing to the prospective ticket holder. Do you like animated emoticons?

Men's and women's basketball group tickets are now available. Would you perhaps like to purchase tickets to the only sports this school gives a fuck about? Well I wish I shat diamonds.

Groups of 15 or more are eligible for women's basketball group rates and groups of 25 or more are eligible for men's basketball. Go ahead and apply in large numbers if it makes you feel better. You've got a better chance at walking on the moon then getting tickets...OK, bad analogy all things considered.

There are only two more games available to see the Boilermakers men's team-against IPFW on Dec. 20 at 6:30 p.m. and Illinois on Dec. 31 at 4 p.m. The only possibilities you have at potentially seeing Robbie Hummel's ACL explode in person are against teams whose mascots are an extinct animal and an extinct people, respectively.

There may be other possible games that Groups Sales can sell, depending on availability. Groups sales sells slick seats citing sales by the seashore.

For more information, visit purduesports.com or contact Group Sales by phone at 765-494-9476 or by email at tickets@purdue.edu Seriously, what aren't you getting about the fact these are the two most popular squads at this school after the Math Team?

Thanks again for your support of our Boilermakers. We hope to see your group again soon at a Purdue athletics event. Look, our town may be a shithole but at least it's not a shithole full of douchbags like Champaign. Seriously, we need your business...please? We have a Steak n' Shake!

Boiler Up! I don't even know what this means.

[redacted] Seriously, don't even think about associating me with this school