It’s still an awful idea. Let’s say you have a couple students who come to every game, getting there plenty early. Team has a good year, they know demand will be high for the last game - they go extra early but still get turned away because students who attended zero games all year showed up even earlier. How is that good over the long run? Will those two students say the next year “I’m not going to a garbage Colgate game since I can’t be sure I’ll get into the premium games”?
For a one-time event, your idea works. For something with multiple events like a sports season, its objectively terrible and a fantastic way to build absolutely no long term loyalty from your students and recent graduates.
The only way this kinda works is if they still “pay”, but not in cash. St Johns gives (or at least used to) points for any games a student attended - soccer, field hockey, volleyball, etc - “points”. The students with the most points got first shot at a seat for basketball games at MSG. The biggest difference between Syracuse and St Johns is there’s built in scarcity at MSG - it’d be insane for us to turn students away from non-sellouts (and setting a flexible cap on seats in the student section for each game would be a logistical nightmare). So I think that, even if SU went this route - it’s still incredibly stupid.