That at least makes some sense. Are opposing teams supposed to be intimidated by the ability of the crowd to spell their mascot's name?

I learned it from BIll & Ted' Excellent Adventure, I believe.

As a UIUC grad, I was tickled to see that lousey hic town used in this context.

I'm guessing the producers don't want to pay first class fares either.

The contestants have a credit card that they use to purchase airfare. One of the rules of using it is that they may only buy coach seats. The bus tickets were paid for with their allotted cash, so the rule didn't apply.

I wonder how many people got in with fake tickets. Security never scanned the bar codes, and the personalized tickets were in an editable HTML format.