On the brink of the most exciting Pitt basketball season in any current student’s memory,… On the brink of the most exciting Pitt basketball season in any current student’s memory, tickets are causing pre-midterm headaches. The University developed a system of distribution that was thought to be fair and comprehensive, but it has fallen far short of expectations. The season ticket sales endeavor is winding down this week, but student frustrations are still on the rise, and rightly so.

From the beginning, administrators and students had a common goal – to pack seats in the Pete and put on a rowdy show for visiting teams and ESPN viewers alike. But the administrators complicated the issue by not allowing enough seats for all the students who wanted tickets. Close to 5,000 students lined up on Friday night for a chance at one of 1,000 available seats. The supply didn’t meet the demand and the result was inevitable – vastly more students left disappointed rather than happy.

Since there weren’t enough tickets to begin with, the University had to seek ways to make the process fair. The wristband lottery system failed to achieve its most fundamental goals. Winning the lottery meant securing a numbered ticket card that guaranteed entrance to all home games. The lottery was meant to discourage students from camping out ahead of time and missing class, and the card is intended to prevent students from selling their highly sought-after tickets for a profit.

But neither attempt was successful. The lottery left many true Pitt fans without tickets, and they will soon be camping out every week for a shot at the tickets reserved for each game, not to mention this Thursday for the start of sales Friday morning. And while the ticket cards cannot be sold, the wristbands themselves were up for sale all over campus this week. Desperate fans bought them for as much as $220.

Problems were also caused by Pitt’s method of posting winning numbers on the Internet. Less than the promised 1,000 were posted Saturday, leaving many disappointed fans to throw away their wristbands only to find extra numbers posted Monday. For one reason or another, 116 supposedly dedicated fans did not turn in their winning wristbands.

Students who actually secured tickets are also disappointed because their friends didn’t get them, and they will be going to games alone. And since the tickets can’t be used by anyone other than the original holder, seats will remain empty for games that holders can’t make it to – especially those over winter and spring breaks.

The real losers in this saga are the students, and ultimately, the team. Many Oakland Zoo veterans will be absent from the stands at game time. Many hard-core supporters will be watching the game at home, and quite possibly channel surfing.