Christmas arrived early for 16 college football fans on December 17, 2011. Allstate conducted free drawings in Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa for the highly sought after BCS National Championship Tickets for the January 9, 2012 game.

Two football greats were on hand to help conduct the drawing, meet with fans, and take pictures with the ticket winners.  Bart Starr was on hand for Alabama Crimson Tide fans and Eddie Kinnison was there for the LSU Tigers.

Eight pair of tickets were given away in each city with drawings taking place every half hour and the winner was required to be present to win.  Every winner was there when their number was pulled. On this day, the cheapest tickets online for the game were listed at $1300.00 each.

Fans that arrived early had better odds of winning since some of the crowd did not get a chance to register until several drawings had taken placeand missed out on the early drawings.  At the LSU drawing, I estimated no more than 100 people had received a ticket to enter the raffle, before the first winner was announced at 12:30. They stopped processing entries for each drawing and resumed it after a winning ticket was pulled.

The registration process: fans were required to show a license or state ID so they could be processed and to prevent multiple entries by one person. After scanning the identification card into a reader, each fan was asked a few questions about insurance and for their phone number and email. Once their data was collected, they were given a ticket for the drawing and a t-shirt. So in that respect, everyone was a winner.

This process was different than the ticket giveaway for LSU BCS tickets in 2007.  At that raffle, entrants were given an entry form to fill out and the people handling the raffle went into the line to collect more entries so more people could register for the drawing.  That drawing had more of a festive atmosphere that had games that you could participate in after registering. This time you had to register at the booth.

Apparently, Eddie Kinnison was contracted for only three hours, since he left after the 3 pm drawing and there were two more drawings left.

I looked at one of the winner's tickets at the LSU drawing and noticed they received tickets on the Alabama  side - Sec 303.  I am not sure if all winners received tickets in that one section.  I am curious if the Alabama winners received tickets on the LSU side.  I am sure none of the lucky few are complaining about seat assignments.