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Title ticket demand caught YSU off guard
YOUNGSTOWN
Christmas season is in the air but many Youngstown State fans are upset they didn’t get the opportunity to purchase tickets for the FCS National Championship on Jan. 7 in Frisco, Texas.
Tuesday, YSU sold out of its allotment of tickets and fans have been forced to go to secondary markets if they’d still want to attend the game with James Madison.
YSU put in a bid of $75,000 to the NCAA which turned into 1,000 seats, which went quickly.
According to the NCAA Participant Manual for January’s game, schools were due to send the NCAA estimates of ticket quantities by Dec. 13.
On Dec. 18, each school had to inform Trina Simerly, Assistant Coordinator for Championships for the NCAA, how many tickets it would like and what locations were preferred.
The document further states that teams could return any unused tickets by Dec. 26 but no hard ticket returns would be accepted, only electronic tickets.
YSU Athletic Director Ron Strollo said on Friday that YSU and James Madison opted for only paper tickets.
“If we chose the electronic option then anyone could’ve bought those and we could’ve had James Madison fans buy our tickets and sit in our section,” Strollo said. “We wanted to protect our tickets and make sure our people were getting tickets in our sections.
“James Madison did the same by not providing electronic tickets either.”
A phone call and email to Simerly were not returned.
James Madison’s ticket sections, according to the NCAA Participant Manual for January’s game, are 100-107.
YSU’s ticket sections were 126-133 but YSU’s bid of $75,000 didn’t cover all of those sections. The bid covered sections 126 and 127. Strollo said YSU decided on their $75,000 bid well before they were required to send their bid.
“We sat down as a group and decided on $75,000 right after Jacksonville State [Dec. 3],” Strollo said. “In hindsight, we should’ve paid more but even if we didn’t have to bid until right after the Eastern Washington game [Dec. 17], I don’t think it would’ve changed our minds.”
YSU only attracted 5,322 fans to show up for a first-round playoff win on Nov. 27. YSU then bid for 15,000 fans for the Penguins’ quarterfinal win over Wofford on Dec. 10 but only 8,066 were in attendance at Stambaugh Stadium.
While it was out of the way, Strollo said fewer than 20 people traveled to Eastern Washington for YSU’s national semifinal win.
Josh Mounce, a sophomore finance major at YSU, pulled the trigger on tickets available online though a secondary market on Monday. After he saw plane ticket costs rising, he felt he couldn’t wait for the moment student tickets went on sale.
YSU sold out of their allotment of tickets before students had an opportunity to purchase though the school.
“I felt like that was going to happen,” Mounce said.
But Mounce said the process of buying online was fairly straightforward.
“I don’t think it was a hassle [to purchase through a secondary market],” Mounce said. “I go to a lot of Cavs games so I do it a lot but I also think a lot of older people would rather buy through the school than go online.”
Strollo said the school is still in the process of trying to find a way to get students to Frisco.
“We have every intention of getting our students down there, we’re just trying to work out the details,” Strollo said.