Let’s say you’re driving on some country road, and you see a guy selling boiled peanuts. Let’s also assume you like boiled peanuts.

You stop to buy some, and you notice that the original price is crossed out and raised by $12.

When you inquire about the price increase, the peanut vendor tells you through his three and a half teeth that his cousin’s rutabaga stand is failing, and he needs the extra money to help him out.

Meanwhile in Athens, football season ticket prices have risen to $42 this year, up from $30 a year ago. And while this is partly to cover the cost of a seventh home game in 2002, there is more. There is a rutabaga-selling cousin involved here.

That would be the new varsity women’s equestrian team, which will be aided financially in its debut season by the extra 12 bucks you had to pay for your football tickets.

I have no problem with a varsity women’s equestrian team. While it is new to college athletics, the sport itself has been around for a while — with origins in the mounted knights of medieval times — and is perfectly legitimate.

It is, however, a legitimate sport that should pay for itself.

Would you want to pay more for your boiled peanuts to help some guy with some rutabagas that you’ll never see? If you wanted to support his rutabaga business, you could just drive further down the road and buy some yourself.

I have to admit I’d pay pretty much whatever they charged for football tickets, as long as it’s cheaper than what the scalpers want. It’s that whole supply and demand thing.

For example, on Tuesday I paid $42 for a little piece of green paper that I am supposed to keep track of for five months. I forget where I park my car downtown almost every day. It’ll be a miracle if I remember where that thing is in August.

But that’s beside the point. The fact that most students are willing to pay more for football tickets proves that if you build it, they will come. If the equestrian team builds a fan base that only slightly flinches at ticket price hikes, then it has made it as a Division I varsity sport.

Until then, however, the team needs to work its way up like football did. There weren’t 86,000 barking fans at Herty Field in 1892, when Georgia beat Mercer in the deep South’s first football game.

Who knows, the equestrian team could follow the same mold and end up being the biggest revenue-producing sport at the University. But that’s if it does it on its own, without mooching off the already successful sports.

That said, I have an idea for the equestrian team to get started on what could be a profitable run in the Classic City.

There is a noticeable lack of boiled peanut stands around here.

– Russell McLendon is sports editor for The Red & Black.