Tickets to go on sale

Always wanted to buy Pitt basketball tickets in your underwear, but been worried about… Always wanted to buy Pitt basketball tickets in your underwear, but been worried about being underdressed?

Now it’s possible, thanks to the new system that the athletics department has created to distribute student season tickets.

Gone are the long lines winding down from the Petersen Events Center to Fifth Avenue. Gone are the yellow wristbands distributed at Midnight Madness. Gone is the lottery.

“We realized that students were not satisfied with the lottery system, so we started looking at various options,” Associate Athletics Director for New Business and Fan Development Jim Earle said.

On Wednesday, tickets will go on sale on the athletics department’s Web site, www.pittsburghpanthers.com, for any current student who wishes to purchase them. The first 1,400 students to enter their Pitt e-mail address, Pitt ID card number and a credit card number will get season tickets.

“This will verify that they are a registered student,” Earle said. “Old ID numbers won’t access the system. This processes the sale and transaction, and students purchase the ticket right there.”

Last year, the athletics department distributed numbered wristbands to students before Midnight Madness and selected the winning numbers the following day.

The original plan, a year ago, was to sell 1,000 season tickets and reserve the rest for individual sale. Any unclaimed season tickets were then sold to anyone willing to camp out in the William Pitt Union overnight.

But when the student section was not filled for the first few games, more season tickets were put on sale, but without any announcement from the athletics department.

With a new system in place, the athletics department hopes to avoid any confusion this year.

“I think what the system does is solves everybody’s concerns,” Earle said. “It’s used at Oklahoma, and [athletics director] Jeff Long brought it in.”

After purchasing the tickets, students will receive a credit to every game on their IDs and then have a series of pick-up dates to get their tickets. According to Earle, on each pick-up date, students will need to go to the Pete to have their ID swiped and will receive tickets to the next two or three games.

“This gives us an idea of how many students are going to use their tickets before that game,” Earle said. “Then the unused ones will go on sale to any student.”

Season-ticket holders will have a couple of days to pick up their tickets before they go on sale to the rest of the student body. Non-season-ticket holders will then have a day or two to purchase the remaining tickets. Then, if there are still some left over, the tickets will be sold to the general public.

According to Earle, this will make certain that the section closest to the floor will always be full of people. Last season, when the student section was not full, the general public was invited to move down and fill the seats.

“No ticket will go unused,” he said. “It helps us in knowing how many students are in the building, and we won’t have to ask the crowd to move down.”

Another change this year is the price of the tickets. While individual game tickets will remain at five dollars, the price of season tickets has been increased to $35 from $20.

“There are more home games this year,” Earle said. “That price had not been increased in a long time and [with 22 games] tickets would have been less than a dollar per game.”

By raising the price, the athletics department also hopes to weed out the students who may not care as much about the team.

“At $20, a lot of people who didn’t care bought the tickets anyways,” Earle added. “We don’t want to get the price too high, but we want to make it so students only buy the ticket to want to see the team.”

Earle also said that, the earlier students pick up their tickets, the closer to the floor they will be.

“On the pick-up dates, we’re going to give out the floor seats first, then go to the reserved seats in the upper level,” he added. “We want students all around the court, but we also want to make sure the seats are filled.”