Student bowl tickets on sale tomorrow

Twenty percent of the team's allotted tickets will go on sale for students tomorrow morning for $36 each. If any tickets remain, the same process will occur Thursday morning.

"We will start handing out line numbers at 7 (a.m.) on Wednesday the 9th," UA senior associate athletic director John Perrin said. "Each student will be allowed to purchase two tickets with the presentation of a CatCard."

While the tickets will be given out on a first-come, first-serve basis, they will be distributed randomly. This means the final ticket buyer has just as good of a chance of getting a good seat as the first buyer.

"We will be handling the distribution of tickets in the same manner as the student basketball tickets," Perrin said. "We feel this will allow every student a fair shot at bowl tickets."

In the past, basketball Final Four tickets were distributed through a lottery process. But Perrin doesn't think a process like that would work for football.

"When the team goes to the Final Four, we usually get about 600 student tickets. So, a lottery procedure has worked well," he said. "But for the bowl games we could get up to 100 times more student tickets. And with such a short turnaround, there is no way we could use the lottery process."

Even though the athletic department is excited about fan support, it is discouraging anyone from camping out the night before.

"We really don't want that kind of thing," Perrin said. "We encourage fans to come out Wednesday morning and try their chances at that time."

Tickets went on sale for the general public yesterday morning. Members of the public who have purchased season tickets can call the McKale ticket office any time between today and Friday to reserve two seats to the Holiday Bowl. These tickets are reserved, however, so there is no threat of a season-ticket holder losing tickets by waiting until Friday to call.

Arlie Rahn can be reached via e-mail at Arlie.Rahn@wildcat.arizona.edu.