Coming off a successful season across the board — Elite Eight berth for volleyball, Pinstripe Bowl for football, NCAA tournament berth for men’s and women’s basketball — the ISU athletic department has decided to change its season ticket package for students heading into 2012-13.

Though the changes are not numerous, they also aren’t necessarily minor. As of last Tuesday, students have the option — as they have for several years — to bundle their season tickets to football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics into one package for $249.

The football tickets will be available by themselves for $125, as well as the Cy’s Pass — a bundle of women’s basketball, volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics — for $30. The change, this year, comes with men’s basketball, which for the first time will not be available individually and can only be purchased through the All Sports Package.

“We offered it last year, on a single package deal, just for men’s basketball,” said ISU Director of Ticket Operations Justin Thompson, when asked what went into the decision to not make men’s basketball tickets available individually. “We looked at it and we only sold 50. There wasn’t a demand for that. That was all we sold last year.

“The overwhelming majority of our students want both, so we developed this package for those that want to purchase both.”

Of those 50 tickets Thompson mentioned as being sold apart from the All Sports Package, approximately 30 went to the ISU pep band that plays during games. With such a small amount, Thompson, along with ISU Athletic Director Jamie Pollard — who addressed last Wednesday night’s ISU Government of the Student Body meeting about the new package —  felt the package made sense.

In addition, Thompson and Pollard, who met with both GSB and Cyclone Alley representatives to gauge the students’ feelings, felt men’s basketball attendance needed a boost. 

Thompson said 2,530 season tickets were sold for men’s basketball — which sold out in July 2011 in record time — but the average student attendance to men’s games was only 40 percent of that. Compare that to football, which sold 7,847 student tickets and saw 70 percent average attendance.

“Basketball is the biggest concern, as far as student attendance,” Thompson said. “For football, when you look at those sections for football students this year, the attendance was good. Those sections were full for most all those games, and they remained full later in the season.

“Basketball attendance is the bigger number, because as everybody noticed, it was very low.”

Outgoing Cyclone Alley co-chairman Alex Jenson had a few examples when asked why he though student attendance was low throughout a season in which the Cyclones returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2005 and featured a player in Royce White, who will likely go in the first round of June’s NBA draft.

In another change, the once-mandatory Cyclone Alley T-shirt will still be distributed but not required to sit in the lower seats of the student section at games. The shirts, he said, were a big culprit.

“First off, the T-shirt requirement was bugging a few people on being able to get to games,” Jenson said. “Are we going to see that increase attendance by 30 percent? No, but it’s a small fraction and every small fraction counts. 

“The other thing, with the balcony not being full, was we had 2,500 tickets sold, [but] not every student can come to every game. Things come up; I’ve got to work, a family emergency. Things like that, it’s a constant battle between where you draw the line for what your priorities are.”

Between selling tickets to other students and the ease of doing so with the electronic ticket system on AccessPlus, Jenson said he thinks students will be able to deal with having to buy men’s basketball tickets within the All Sports Package.

Jenson said he feels for those who bought separately, but there’s a bigger picture to be seen.

“I think everybody will be OK,” Jenson said. “I do feel bad for those 20-something that did buy basketball tickets, but you’ve got to look at the grand scheme of things.”

The remedy Thompson, Pollard and others came up with to get the extra boost is to oversell men’s basketball tickets by as much as 50 percent.

Thompson said the practice is used by Kansas and Kansas State as well. The theory, Thompson said, is if more tickets are available, more students will be able to come to games on a first come, first served basis.

“There’s not really a set number, it’s kind of going to be set off the flow of our sales,” Thompson said. “Access to men’s basketball will be on a first come, first served basis. Pretty much, we really encourage students to arrive early to the games. Get there early if you want to be guaranteed admission.

“It’ll be something we handle on a game-by-game basis. If we get to that point … people that come late that try to get in, unfortunately won’t be able to get in for those games.”

That possibility, said GSB president-elect Jared Knight, is unacceptable. Knight said when Thompson and Pollard spoke with the Athletics Advisory Council about the new strategy, he expressed concern.

Knight wondered why students would be willing to pay for something that isn’t guaranteed, especially with the limited funds they sometimes have.

“I think what athletics is doing makes sense to them, but I don’t think it’s necessarily what’s best,” Knight said. “What [they want] to do is oversell the student section, maybe go to [3,000] or 4,000 tickets, so theoretically only half those people show up, so 2,000 people still come, but there are 2,500 seats in the student section, so it’s more full. That I’m concerned about, because if you buy a season ticket you should get in to every game.

“Why would I pay for a ticket if I’m not guaranteed admission to the game?”

Knight also pointed to the culture around ISU basketball as another reason against the oversell strategy.

Programs like Kansas and Kansas State are able to make an oversell strategy work, Knight said, because the demand is clearly there, based on a number of factors.

“Frankly, though, this is not Kansas,” Knight said. “It’s a different culture here.

“At this point, Iowa State basketball is not so far above the students that we can charge people for something they’re never going to access. And hopefully Iowa State basketball will never be at a point where they’re above the students. Students are paying for tickets and they should be able to access them.”

Jenson, though, is definitely in favor of the oversell strategy. The outgoing co-chairman said “it’s a tough situation” since the strategy is brand-new.

He used the Kansas and Kansas State examples as positives — as opposed to Knight’s view — and only sees the non-guarantee of seats be a problem in a few instances.

“It’s not like we’re the only ones that are going to do it,” Jenson said. “I think we’re only going to see it be an issue at a few games. If [Iowa State is] ranked and Kansas is ranked, you’re going to see that.

“Overselling is going to be a good thing for our basketball program. It’ll get people there. As we saw last year, when we stopped selling tickets, there were students who couldn’t get tickets. So now overselling will get all those students there. Overselling will only increase our attendance and hopefully increase the percentages of attendance.”

While Knight said he can’t agree with the notion that a ticket isn’t guaranteed and said to turn people away is “unacceptable,” Jenson countered with the fact that Kansas does so at each home game.

Jenson said it would be a “disappointing” situation for those fans and if he heard it happened next year, he’d definitely feel for those that were turned away.

But the bottom line for Jenson is turning fans away is ultimately a positive in terms of popularity and interest in ISU basketball.

“It’s something that, it sucks,” Jenson said. “It’s terrible and unfortunate that people would have to get turned away, but at the same time it means there’s a demand for our tickets — and that’s a good thing.”