Hot ticket: Five Bison home games already sold out

By Jeff Kolpack

August 01, 2012 at 3:50 PM

FARGO - If the North Dakota State athletic department ticket office computer could talk, it would tell you it needs a day off. Today was an exhausting day.

Thursday is the first day of Bison football practice and already five of NDSU's six home games are sold out. Single game tickets went on sale today and it was just a matter of a few hours before available seats for Youngstown State (Pa.), Indiana State, Southern Illinois and South Dakota State were gone.

The home opener on Sept. 1 vs. Robert Morris University (Pa.) was sold out by mid-afternoon. Tickets for a non-conference game against Prairie View A&M (Texas) on Sept. 22 are expected to be gone Thursday, said NDSU ticket manager Josh Hemingway.

"We really do have the best and craziest fans," Bison receiver Trevor Gebhart said on his Twitter account.

Momentum from a Division I Football Championship Subdivision title pushed season tickets to a record 12,100 in the 18,700-seat Fargodome. Combined with the 4,000 seats allocated to NDSU students and designated tickets to players, parents and recruits, it left between 800 and 1,200 available to the general public every game.

Most of them were sold on the athletic department's website. Unclaimed designated tickets and between 300 and 400 standing room tickets will be available the Friday before every home game beginning at 8 a.m.

NDSU has in the past put unclaimed student tickets up for sale the day before a game. Athletic Director Gene Taylor said he doesn't know if a similar policy will be instituted this year but that the athletic department plans on talking with the students about possible options.

"But I don't anticipate students (not showing up) to be an issue this year," he said.

Forum reporter Jeff Kolpack can be reached at (701) 241-5546.

Kolpack's NDSU media blog can be found

at www.areavoices.com/bisonmedia

Kolpack is the host of the WDAY Golf Show Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. on 970-AM.

By Jeff Kolpack

Jeff would like to dispel the notion he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is on his third decade of reporting with Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he's covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU's Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: "Horns Up," "North Dakota Tough" and "Covid Kids." He is the radio host of "The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack" April through August.