Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t one of those kids whose parents just, you know, had season tickets to things. I grew up loving teams in three different sports, and going to a game was a rare treat.

In fact, it was a good day if my favorite team was playing on TV. Not being able to watch your favorite team is becoming a more distant memory with each improvement to mobile technology and Internet streaming, as well as the new era of thousands of TV channels we live in. As absurd as it sounds, people used to buy season tickets just to watch their favorite teams. That has become an antiquated notion, as tickets have become an excess, a luxury.

There’s been talk since the advent of high-definition television about whether owning season tickets is worthwhile, given that you can get a clear and thorough picture into the team if you stay at home and watch on TV — and it’s a worthy debate.

Most of my personal experience with having tickets to games is enviously congratulating my friends who have them. I’ve been to a fair amount of games, though, and when I go, I spend a lot of time looking at the Jumbotron.

Obviously, anyone who was in the building for the Indiana game will contend that the “atmosphere” is priceless and that golden moments like that are not to be missed if possible. They will have a good point. But those same people also paid to see the Northwestern and Wisconsin losses, and wins like that thriller over Penn State — games during which I’d rather have been able to do something else.

And basketball’s an indoor sport that takes just over two hours. Anyone with Illinois football season tickets remembers how worth it those were. Because you can’t quite comprehend how incompetent Illinois’ offense was unless you get the full scale of the field they can’t use.

Football games can be cold, and if you’re watching a team as bad as the Illini were, you’re standing in the cold for three-plus hours, paying $17 for sub-par chicken strips and Dasani water (they add salt to the water, as in the same stuff that makes ocean water undrinkable), and leaving early, filled with disappointment.

Television presentation subjects viewers to the varied quality of the commentating and the production quirks that can enhance the viewing experience and provide informational context that doesn’t just pop into your field of vision while you watch the game live.

Of course, you could stream the game live on your computer, either legally through watchespn.com or a similar site, or illegally through firstrowsports.eu. However, streaming illegally subjects you to deceptive and obnoxious advertisements and poor streaming quality, which can be more infuriating than worthwhile.

Or you could follow the game on GameCast (or GameTracker, for Illinois games). This gives you pretty detailed box score updates, so you can see how the game develops without needing to devote total attention to it. This is actually a good way to follow a game you’re mildly interested in while doing something like writing a paper or reading for class. Then, if the game gets interesting, you can just stream the fantastic finish.

These are the tricks you learn when you live in a studio apartment without television.

You can also follow the game on your mobile phone, receiving updates at the end of each quarter or when it’s a particularly close game. 

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get away from sports. We went from needing to see it in person, to reading about it in a newspaper, to listening to radio updates (or broadcasts), to seeing television updates (or broadcasts), to having mobile updates, to having mobile streaming.

Additionally, you don’t need to watch games with people anymore because of Twitter. You can just sit with your laptop, skim through tweets and flip back to your live stream, all for the price of free Wi-Fi.

Suddenly, the opportunity cost of the atmosphere is more trouble than it’s worth.

Eliot is a junior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @EliotTweet.