Would anyone be crazy enough to buy a P55 ticket for P1,500? Apparently, yes — and there are many of them, if the crowd that packed the Araneta Coliseum to the rafters last Sunday was any indication. That P1,500 price was what scalpers set for a general admission ticket to the first game of the championship series between the Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University, the two glamour clubs not only of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) but of Philippine basketball today.

If that amount looks mind-boggling, consider this: The online auction for two patron tickets priced at P325 each saw somebody bidding P50,300.

And yet those people who paid such astronomical sums could have gotten a bargain. In the next UAAP basketball season, a fan may have to spend anywhere from P60,000 to P70,000 for the privilege of watching an Ateneo-La Salle game — and that doesn’t even guarantee him a ticket yet. All it does is to assure him a place in the long queues of ticket buyers, both in the schools and at the Araneta box office.

If those figures look suspiciously like the cost of matriculation for one semester (or trimester) in Ateneo or La Salle, that is because they are. Enrolling in those schools now seems to be the only way one can have a chance to buy a ticket to their games, unless one is an alumnus or is willing to pay through the nose. And that is the end result of a misguided policy adopted by the Araneta Center limiting the sale of tickets only to people who can produce IDs or authorization letters from either of the two schools.

On Monday, even before the box office opened, Araneta Center guards told people who had lined up as early as the night before that unless they had Ateneo or La Salle IDs, they won’t get any tickets for the second game of the championship series. And indeed some people were turned away after they failed to produce that precious ID. In earlier games, an announcement on the Araneta Center’s LCD screen said the same thing: No ID or authorization letter from a UAAP member school, no ticket.

Araneta Center officials deny they have such a discriminatory policy. What they have put in place, they say, are measures to run scalpers out of business by denying them tickets. Thus, one official said, they have turned away some people who looked “madungis” [grimy] or came in slippers.

In other words, if you don’t look halfway decent or respectable, you can’t be just a basketball fan; you can only be a scalper. From there it is only a short step before one arrives at the conclusion that unless somebody is from Ateneo or La Salle, he doesn’t line up for tickets to enjoy the game but to earn a windfall on the black market.

Well, we have some big news for the bright boys of Araneta Center: Those tickets sold online as well as those lower box tickets offered at P5,000 each and upwards didn’t come from people who lined up at the box office. The people who made a killing were not the usual suspects. Araneta Center officials are looking at the wrong people and in the wrong places. And if UAAP officials want to help stamp out scalping, they need not look far. All they have to do is look at the people around them.

In the meantime, Araneta Center officials should not make the crackdown on scalping an excuse for discriminating against ordinary basketball fans. It smacks of old-fashioned elitism, which should have no place in a competition that seeks to foster goodwill and friendship among member schools and showcase teamwork more than individual talent.

If they open the door to the general public when less popular teams play, they should keep it open when Ateneo goes against La Salle. The storied hard-court rivalry between the two schools has grown bigger than the UAAP. It has become a national event that not only basketball lovers look forward to and watch. League officials and the Araneta Center should not turn it into a private party for the perfumed set.