Students who are still hopeful additional football tickets will be released for the upcoming season will need the university to physically add more seats to Beaver Stadium in order to see the Nittany Lions play at home, Penn State's Associate Athletic Director for Marketing and Communications Greg Myford said.

Even with the prospect of additional seating as the only chance left for ticket-less students, the idea seems to be growing more and more unlikely in the minds of many, especially with the season less than two months away.

The decision would rely on the input of several personnel members, including the Penn State Office of Physical Plant (OPP), Myford said.

However, when contacted, OPP spokesman Paul Ruskin and OPP Project Manager Marv Bevan were unaware of any discussion regarding the idea of additional seats for Beaver Stadium.

Public sales, which began Friday morning, have already sold out for all home games except the University of Akron and Temple University games.

With student tickets selling out in a record 13 days after going on sale June 1, some hope lingered that more tickets would be made available to students who failed to purchase tickets earlier.

"Our student body at Penn State has never experienced a ticket demand like this," Myford said.

Due to a sharp increase in Nittany Lion Club memberships, the possibility of providing more opportunities for student tickets was hampered from the get-go, Myford said.

"Things happened prior to student sales that made any type of significant accommodations hard," Myford said. "Our situation in trying to find additional seats was at a disadvantage."

As optimism for additional season tickets seems to be dwindling for the Penn State student body, avoiding the problem of high demand for future football season tickets has become a major concern for the athletic ticket office.

"We're never going to be able to accommodate the student body from a numbers position. We're just trying to make it fair for everyone," Myford said. "As this season gets going we'll start being concerned about next year."

Trying to examine whether or not to add more seats is only part of the responsibility of the ticket office, which also must deal with dividing up the tickets in the fairest manner, Myford said.

Part of the problem lies in Penn State's enrollment almost doubling the capacity Beaver Stadium has in its student section.

"Really all of this is driven by demand," Myford said. "The hard fact is that we're not going to be in the position to go from 21,000 student tickets to 40,000 student tickets." More>>>

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