Georgia Fans On An Overbooked Flight To South Bend Turned Down $3,000 To Fly Up Later That Day

College football fans are a passionate bunch. Depending on the fan, they relish the opportunity to travel to watch their team play, both because it provides the chance to watch a game in person and because it gives them a chance to experience a place they’d never visit if not for sports.

Take, for instance, Georgia fans. They’re some of the most passionate and well-organized in the sport, and this week, they’re getting to do something new: travel to South Bend, Indiana. The Bulldogs are playing at Notre Dame on Saturday night for the first time ever in a matchup of two of the sport’s blue bloods.

For Georgia fans, this is a really cool opportunity, so as you can guess, they’re really excited. In fact, they’re so excited that a whole bunch of them booked the same flight out of Atlanta to get up to South Bend and party.

Now let’s be clear: Flights getting overbooked and delayed is common, but that doesn’t make it any less awful when it happens. Delta still offered a ton of cash to try and remedy the situation, but it apparently didn’t consider that Georgia fans really wanted to get to Notre Dame as soon as possible. So like any negotiator, Delta upped its offer.

Despite the fact that this is a ton of money, no one on the flight was willing to take the deal. So Delta went even further, offering $4,000 to shift flights. This ended up convincing one person, who was all smiles about their big payday.

Now, we need to get to the craziest thing about this scenario. The flight that got delayed was scheduled to take off at 9:55 a.m. on Friday. As you can see, the woman who took the $4,000 from Delta left Atlanta nine hours later. As SB Nation pointed out, a flight from Atlanta to South Bend is less than two hours, so she’s still getting to town with enough time to spend a night bar hopping, go to bed, tailgate all day, and make it to Notre Dame Stadium in time for the 7:30 p.m. kick on Saturday.

I live in a college town and can understand why you’d want to spend as much time as you can experiencing everything — going to bars, getting dinner somewhere unique, eating a crappy slice of $1 pizza right before you head to bed, walking through campus and marveling at the pure joy that students feel on a football weekend, all that stuff.

But you should absolutely take $4,000 if it means getting to a college town nine hours later the day before the game.
Worst case scenario, you have more energy to tailgate the following day, and also you have enough money for a flight/ticket/hotel for a few games later that season. Or you can pay your bills for a few months or something, that works too.

(Via SB Nation)