The Wisconsin athletic ticket office will determine student seating at the Jan. 1 Outback Bowl using class standing as who receives tickets first.
According to UW-Madison Associate Athletic Director Steve Malchow, the bowl game has allotted approximately 11,000 tickets in Raymond James Stadium to UW-Madison.
After taking care of internal necessities, such as tickets for the team and campus dignitaries, students received 20 percent of that amount. The remainder is distributed to Athletic Department donors using the Badger Priority Points System and put on sale for the public, Malchow said.
For this year, the number of available student seats came to just over 1,200, a number that will in no way be sold, according to UW-Madison Assistant Athletic Director Corbin Hunt. Since sales will not fill the capacity of the student section, all student season ticket holders who send in requests by 4:30 p.m. today will receive tickets.
\We would have used a lottery had we exceeded the capacity of the student section, but this year ... it was completely unnecessary,"" Hunt said.
""We don't do it the same way that we've done the single games pick-ups. We will actually allocate the seats. It's for timeliness and more control,"" Hunt said
""It has worked in the past, and we are following what we have done the last few years,"" Malchow said. ""It seems like a fair and equitable way to seat them.""
He cited this method as a way to reward the upperclassmen as well.
UW-Madison freshman Dan Edelbeck agreed.
""If a senior who's been at the university for five years wanted to go to a bowl game, I can see them getting better seats than the freshman who is just coming in,"" he said.
However, Hunt said if any students wish to sit together, they need to only call back the athletic tickets office and request to be seated with certain people, and the ticket office will do so.
""I guess it's fair because they pick the loyal fans over several years, but then again there are probably people who care more who won't get the seats that they want,"" said UW-Madison freshman and season ticket holder Alison Horn.
Since only a little over 500 total student tickets have sold to date Hunt said, ""[students] are all going to be with in the same section so there is really no dramatic difference in the seats.\
