On the radio and television during the past two weeks, athletic director Jamie Pollard has been criticized and second-guessed on the decision not to sell single-game tickets for the Iowa State/Iowa football game this fall.

Pollard isn’t upset about it. In fact, he’s overjoyed.

“That’s great free advertising,” said Pollard, who said the plan has been in the works since last fall. “You can’t buy that kind of advertising. The more we can stay in the media the better off we’ll be. It sells tickets.”

In 2006, the athletic department set and reached the goal of selling 30,000 season tickets.

This fall, Pollard is pushing more fans to make the same commitment, forcing the ISU fan base to buy season passes if they want to watch the Iowa “Super Bowl” in person. Pollard said if people expect a compromise before the Sept. 15 game then, “they don’t know us very well.” Though inconceivable to some, he could also see that Jack Trice Stadium may not be filled to capacity.

Other than its effect on families, the ticket decision doesn’t affect students. The student ticket allotment has been increased to 7,800 tickets compared with the 7,000 from last year.

“The student’s response last year was great,” said Pollard, referring to the first half of the football team’s 4-8 season. “I mean, granted the last couple games, but the last couple games it was like that for everybody.”

“No one has said we expected to sell it out,” Pollard said. “If there are empty seats, and there very may well be – I hope there’s not, but if there are, that’s just the cost of marketing the program, because there are going to be more season tickets sold. There is no question about it . You could spend a lot of money to get people to buy season tickets, or you can do something like this, that inspires them to buy season tickets, and may not cost you a dime.”

For casual Iowa State fans, however, there will be a higher incurred cost to see the ISU-Iowa game. Season tickets in Sections A, B, L, K 1, 2, 17, and 18 will cost $195 for the upcoming season’s 7 home games. Hillside season tickets are available for $150.

“We need to get to a spot where we sell a ton of season tickets,” Pollard said. “History will show you that we sold that [Iowa single-game] ticket and sold it out, and what has it resulted? What has it gained us? It’s gained us the smallest budget in the Big 12, and it’s gained us an athletics program that isn’t all that competitive across the board and has huge financial challenges staring at it.

“We could have done what everybody has done for years, and it wasn’t going to change the outcome. So we’ve got to try to do something different.”

Pollard said most of the negative feedback has been from casual fans or alumni who come back to Ames for the intra-state rivalry game. In total, he said the response has been favorable.

“There are some ISU people that aren’t happy about it. Most of those fall into the category of somebody that came back one game a year,” Pollard said. “Yeah, I feel for those people, but there are six other games they can come back for.”

Misconceptions have also fueled the debate over the ticket change.

“When we sold the tickets two years ago, they never were on sale to the public,” Pollard said. “So when an Iowa fan says ‘it’s not right that I can’t call the ticket office and buy a ticket to that game,’ they never were able to last time anyways, because all the extra single game tickets were sold to our season ticket holders as a benefit. “Our ticket holders turned around and sold them to Iowa people.”

Pollard said there is no chance of the department backing off from the decision, saying it would alienate the fans who made the commitment to buy season tickets.

In the end, the decision boils down to establishing a commitment between fans and the program.

“That’s what it comes down to,” Pollard said, referring to commitment. “If we want to have a great athletics program, then we need to support it – in football at least – all seven games, not just one game.”