Level U2, Section P, Row 6, Seats 9-12.

As long as those crimson seats were bolted into Bryant-Denny Stadium, that’s where the Burnette family spent their fall Saturdays. The stadium was expanded in 1988 just as Jack and Barbara Burnette were planning to have children so they bought four season tickets in the new seats added between the west side upper and lower decks. Before long, Alison and Riggs Burnette would grow up in their small slice of college football paradise.

It was there the Burnette crew met Courtney Smith and his family in those tough Alabama football years. Smith remembers watching Alison mature from a child into an adult in Section P as the Crimson Tide’s fortune turned for the better. In a way, they grew into an extended family -- reuniting every fall bound by a common love of Alabama football and neighboring seats for the journey.

Construction crews ripped those plastic chairs from their concrete anchors a few weeks ago. They were taken to a local bowling alley parking lot and sold by a demolition company.

The future is coming to Bryant-Denny Stadium and not everyone is sticking around.

A surgical $106 million renovation to the 90-year old structure is doing away with those approximately 2,200 modestly priced nine rows of seats on the U1 and U2 levels tucked between the west side’s upper and lower bowls. These were quality seats, covered from the elements and chair-backed unlike the majority bench seating in the 101,821-capacity stadium.

That space will now be occupied by the Champions Club, one of the several new premium options replacing more traditional seats in the U1 and U2 levels of the stadium’s west side. Starting next fall, those in Section P will have cushioned seats, access to an indoor, temperature-controlled club and an all-inclusive buffet.

That doesn’t come cheaply, and that’s where the issue for families like the Burnettes come into play. Each seat now requires a $10,000 one-time donation and an additional $3,500 contribution every season. That doesn’t include the price of the actual tickets, which were $495 apiece last year for the top tier seats.

Burnette in 2019 paid $940 a ticket including a $480 donation for each of his four seats minus the amenities.

That same seat next year is $13,995 in the Champions Club if the initial donation is paid up front or $5,995 if spread into five equal portions. It comes with a 10-year commitment meaning each seat will cost $49,950 and only if the $495 season ticket prices never rise.

Other options in that neighborhood include the Terrace Club with prices of $13,245 for Year 1 including the $10,000 up-front donation.

2020 club prices 1-time donation Annual donation Ticket price Total Champions $10,000 $3,500 $495 $13,995 Terrace $10,000 $2,750 $495 $13,245 Loge box (4 seats) $150,000 $16,000 $495 $166,495 2019 club prices Crimson Tide n/a $750 $460 $1,210 Touchdown n/a $480 $460 $940 Bama n/a $320 $460 $780

No thanks, said Burnette, Smith and others who shared Section P these past three decades.

“I think beyond anything else, I’m sad,” said Burnette, a financial advisor and 1978 Alabama graduate living in Birmingham. “We’ve enjoyed those seats. We’ve loved them. And I am not willing to pay, what to me -- I’m an average guy -- an exorbitant price they want.

“And I’m a little frustrated because I still don’t know what our options are.”

Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne said the school intends “to be transparent and you also want to be empathetic” to those impacted by the changes.

“One of the things that we had to balance here is we don’t take any satisfaction in moving anybody out of their seats. Zero,” Byrne said in an interview with AL.com. “And we want to be very sensitive to all of our season ticket holders and all of the stadium. At the same time too, we have to balance that with what do we do to move the program forward? One of the worst things we could do as a program is while we’re having historical success to not look at where our long-term strategies are for our department.”

Byrne pointed to the home-and-home series with high-end opponents as adding value to the slate of games in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Those games start in 2023 when Texas visits followed by Wisconsin, Florida State, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech.

Candace Glass, a 2004 UA graduate and lifetime ticket holder, doesn’t expect to be in the stadium for those games. She dropped her season tickets after the 2018 season when it was clear the end was near for the seats her family occupied since they were built in 1988.

“It felt like they were our seats,” Glass said. “When you sit there for 30 years, I mean, we had grown up in those seats. Before I even paid attention to any of the football games, I was sitting in those seats. It just felt like a piece of our family … and our grandparents are no longer living, so it felt even more like a piece of us were no longer … because when we sat in those seats, we remember talks with them.”

The process of reshaping that part of the stadium has been in the works for years, originally announced to the public in August 2018 as part of the Crimson Standard campaign to raise $600 million. Bryant-Denny Stadium has been reimagined eight times in expansions since opening in 1929. This is the first time the structure will be reconfigured from the inside instead of building up.

That was met with frustrations among those who will be displaced by the progress that’s characterized the last few decades of college sports. This comes with a backdrop of lawsuits and proposed laws concerning the amateurism of athletes and the seven-to-eight figure salaries of those in charge.

Alabama had athletics revenues of $177.5 million in 2018, according to documents filed with the NCAA -- up from $108.7 million in inflation-adjusted figures from 10 years ago.

Business is good but it can always be better.

***

Burnette is perhaps more diplomatic than Smith when it comes to losing his seats.

A Tuscaloosa native now living in Georgia, Smith remembers the time you could park on the edge of the quad for free and walk into the game. Now the campus is a maze of roadblocks, premium tailgating options and parking spaces for only a select few.

“It’s not the Crimson Tide,” Smith said. “It’s the Green Tide and Roll Greed Roll. That’s my new motto.”

While noting the response he’s heard to the changes “are a mixed bag,” Byrne said there’s a misperception that all of the new premium seating options are being purchased by corporations.

“It’s just not accurate,” Byrne said. “We have people who are Alabama fans who might own a business who may be purchasing some of these seats in different areas, but the great majority of these seats are being used for personal use, not corporate use. Not to say there’s not none but the great majority are people who are long-time Alabama fans who are taking advantage of what this opportunity allows.”

The seats, on the same level as the old press box, are being removed for premium club levels requiring five-figure donations.Photo by Michael Casagrande | mcasagrande@al.com

Of those who signed on to the new premium offerings, 86 percent were Tide Pride season ticket holders in 2019 and 94 percent purchased tickets at some point, according to the university.

Like Burnette and Glass, Smith received a letter from Alabama in late November about the reseating process. It states they will have an opportunity starting in March to find new seats using a virtual seating program.

A few months before that, Burnette received a call from the university about his seating options.

“I almost felt like they were expecting me to do that,” Burnette said. “It almost made me feel like I was being held hostage, a little bit. I just didn’t … I didn’t like that.”

Byrne said the university “certainly haven’t tried for it to be high pressure” when listing options.

“We understand that if people aren’t comfortable being in the new area from a financial standpoint,” he said, “we want to offer them one of the other options out there.”

The issue groups like the Burnette, Smith and Glass families face comes down to the numbers. Alabama famously carries a long wait list for any season tickets in Bryant-Denny Stadium. So, finding a bloc of four available seats in Burnette’s case or six for Smith is an issue.

The U1 and U2 ticket holders who don’t want the new club options will be put to the front of the line for reseating elsewhere in the stadium, said J Batt, Alabama’s senior associate AD for development and revenue generation.

“So, we’re going to take care of them before the waiting list,” Batt said. “We’re going to take care of them before accommodating other seat moves in Bryant-Denny. So, we’re doing our darndest to make sure they end up in the best spot we can possibly put them.”

The goal, Byrne said, is to keep the larger families together when the reseating occurs.

“Until we know what inventory we have to work with,” Byrne said, “we can’t say absolutely.”

Burnette said he was considering seats in one of the end zone club levels. The annual contributions would jump to $2,000 to $2,500 a ticket compared to the $480 he spent last year. Byrne said the up-front contributions required for the two end zone clubs would be waived for those impacted in the U1 and U2 levels. That initial contribution was $25,000 a ticket.

“If our alternative isn’t particularly attractive, we’ll probably opt to become mostly TV viewers,” Burnette said. “And then I’ll just pick up games that I want to go to through StubHub or something of that nature. It just is what it is.”

Smith and Glass also said they were most likely going to join the ranks of those who purchase tickets on the secondary market for the games they’d like to see and skip the reseating process. There are more affordable options for sale with donations as low as $60 per seat on top of the $395-$495 season-ticket prices. There’s no guarantee of availability in those sections with uncovered bench seats.

***

Burnette could see this whole scenario coming thanks to his old breakfast friend.

He used to grab a bite at Salem’s Diner in Homewood before heading to his office and sometimes he’d chat with the local celebrity. Former SEC commissioner Mike Slive famously dined there before his 2018 death.

Slive negotiated the first big-money TV deal that fueled the SEC gold rush. Of Alabama’s $177.5 million of revenue in 2018, $46.1 million came from TV rights -- up from an inflation-adjusted $10.5 million it made from TV a decade earlier.

Burnette remembers talking to Slive about this television dynamic in the years after the commissioner retired in 2015.

“And he kind of acknowledged that they’ve kind of created this monster with the great TV experience that schools are now having to compete with,” Burnette said.

There’s also the matter of the federal tax reform that took effect in January 2018. No longer could season ticket holders deduct 80 percent of those donations required to purchase the seats. That benefit made the donations more tolerable, Burnette said.

“I probably would have done, if I didn’t have the up-front payment, the $3,500 per seat donation if it were tax deductible,” Burnette said. “I would have to think about it and my wife and I would have to agree on that but we could do that if we wanted to. I’m not where I can’t afford to do it. I’m just not sure that’s where I would choose to spend my money.”

***

For the most part, the displaced season ticket holders who spoke with AL.com weren’t angry as much as they were just sad.

They were there for the bad years but the success of the past decade ultimately became the factor that ended their three decades in the sections sacrificed to the premium seating.

“This is not a conversation out of hate,” Smith said. “It’s out of disappointment.”

Glass, who worked for former AD Mal Moore as a student, said this experience came with a lesson. She used to look down upon games against lower-level competition.

The Burnette family -- Barbara, Riggs, Alison and Jack -- at the Alabama-LSU game in the Bryant-Denny Stadium seats they've held since 1988.

“Like who wants to go see Western Carolina if you could go see LSU?” she said. “But now, I would take tickets to any game. Western Carolina? I don’t care. I’ll sit there and watch them play anybody.”

Smith described the scene at the last game he attended in his old seats.

“It was sad. It was really sad,” Smith said. “We all kind of looked around and … I mean, the people 10 seats away, we were like ‘Enjoyed the run. Enjoyed the seats’ and we all kind of looked at each other like hey, it was fun. I can’t believe that because of all the support and all the progress and all the success and cheering for a team for years and years and years, the end result is you don’t have enough green to stay. We don’t want the fan. We just want the cash.”

And for Burnette, there was a feeling of nostalgia. He remembers pushing his children up the spiral ramps in strollers to their seats.

“I understand the university’s desire to capitalize on our success and everything,” Jack Burnette said. “I just hate it that the university has grown beyond what I’m willing to invest in the program.”

With that, their four seats are part of Alabama football history -- sold to anyone who knew the plastic chairs were on the market.

They weren’t part of Bryant-Denny Stadium’s future because they just create the same revenue stream as a posh new club. The Burnette children aren’t kids anymore as Jack and Barbara’s oldest is married and just turned 32.

The college football economy is different now. Alabama’s vision for capitalizing on the dominant decade mean changes for people like the Burnettes.

So they gathered at the Alabama-LSU game Nov. 9 for one more afternoon as a family of four.

And they said goodbye to Level U2, Section P, Row 6, Seats 9-12.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.