Penn State football clinched a first-round home game when the College Football Playoff Selection Committee announced the first-ever 12-team bracket on Sunday. The Nittany Lions will welcome the SMU Mustangs to Beaver Stadium for a noontime matchup.
While there is excitement about the opportunity to host a playoff game, there has been much of controversy surrounding ticket sales and distribution, leaving many feeling shortchanged by the process.
So, how does the College Football Playoff ticketing process work? We break it down below.
CFP controls ticketing
© Adam Cairns / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Despite the fact that Penn State football is the one hosting the first round playoff game, the university is not who controls the ticketing process. The College Football Playoff actually receives the revenue for all ticket sales and is who set the prices. The tickets range from $100 to $250, which does not include club or suite tickets.
Penn State will get to keep any revenue they earn from concessions and parking to help offset the cost of hosting the event. The CFP also will require for SMU to receive 3,500 tickets with a maximum of 500 of those tickets going to the band. The Mustang fans can be split up into no more than two blocks and at least 1,500 of their ticket allotment must be in the lower bowl. While SMU will decide where their band sits, it must have access to the field.
It appears SMU will be placed in two locations. The first is where opposing fans traditionally sit in Beaver Stadium: the upper deck of the north endzone in sections NLU and NKU. The lower bowl section is harder to pinpoint, but it looks most likely that will be placed in section WA. There are no tickets available in WA for resale, and the section will provide a buffer zone from the Penn State student section.
This could be where the band will sit, as it’ll have direct access to the field as required by the CFP. There isn’t many other options for Penn State because the north endzone and sidelines were seats given to season ticket holders. Taking an allotment from the normal student section was an easy choice.
Penn State students failed to buy allotment, or did they?
Unlike other home games, Penn State will not have a full student section for its first-round playoff game against SMU. The students will have tickets from section EA through SH. However, sections EAU, SJ-WA, and WAU will be sold to the general public.
This will be about 5,000 less seats than the normal 21,000+ students that Beaver Stadium usually holds. The move does make some sense when considering the timing of the playoff game. The Penn State academic semester has already ended by this point and fall graduation is set for the day after the playoff game. And while the dorms will remain open until December 22, it will also be right before Christmas, with many students returning home for the holiday.
That said, student tickets are open to all Penn State students at University Park and every branch campus. As of this past fall semester, there were 87,995 students attending Penn State at one of these locations. That number is well over quadruple the amount needed to fill the student allotment.
Audrey Snyder of The Athletic reported on X earlier this week that Penn State students did not request their full allotment of tickets, which freed up about 5,000 more seats that could be sold for more money by the CFP.
However, this claim was quickly disputed by multiple current Penn State students, who claimed that they were either denied from receiving tickets or won a ticket via a lottery system but had never received them. While some believe there may have been a glitch in the ticketing system, others think the cause is more nefarious.
With normal tickets starting around six times more expensive than the student price, what can’t be debated is that the situation flooded the market with more tickets than normal and lowered the get-in price for the playoff game as a whole.
A slightly different home field advantage
Clearly this will be a Penn State football home game, but it will have a little bit of a twist from what we see in the regular season.
SMU will also be allowed to use its traditional run out with music and a video if it chooses. The Mustangs will also be allowed to bring its band and will perform at halftime. Both SMU and the Penn State Blue Band will get six minutes and 30 seconds of the extended 22-minute halftime.
The CFP will also control digital signage and in game entertainment, forcing Penn State to cover up any lower bowl advertising and use playoff sponsors.
But for the most part, the game should feel the same once the ball is kicked off. “We want it to be as similar to a normal home game as possible,” said CFP Director of Premium and Ticket Sales Michael Bos. “We’re trying to have them make as few changes as possible.”
So, while there will be a few things changed on December 21, for the most part, it will be just like every other big game environment in Beaver Stadium. Except of course this time, there will be a noon White Out.
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