A guide to student ticketing for home football games

West Virginia University students have the opportunity to sit in one of the largest student sections in the country for football games.

There are 11,000 seats reserved for students at Milan Puskar Stadium, mainly in the upper deck.

That will not change this year, according to WVU's Director of Sports Marketing Matt Wells.

Wells said the University makes 12,500 student tickets available to deal with no-shows and will continue to divvy out tickets in the same way as in previous years, through a merit and seniority-based process.

"For the most part, the students understand it, and the system works," Wells said. "Things have gone well."

Student tickets for a WVU football game are requested online at www.WVUgame.com. Click on the tab labeled "Student Tickets" and follow the link to the student ticketing website.

To enter the site, students will use their MIX username. The password is the last six digits of the student's ID number.

"The best thing to do is familiarize themselves with the system and understand how it works," Wells said.

To be safe, log in at least once before the season nears to be sure there are no problems with the username or password.

Click on "request ticket." If the tickets for the game are highlighted in yellow, they are available to be requested. The first home football game is Saturday, Sept. 4 against Coastal Carolina at a time to be announced. Student ticket requests begin Sunday, Aug. 29 at 12:01 a.m.

Students will have two days to sign up for a ticket.

When requesting a ticket for the first time, only one ticket can be requested. Students do have a choice between "lower level," "upper level" or "Maniacs." All Mountaineer Maniacs sit in the upper section of Milan Puskar Stadium.

This is where the bulk of the student seats are available, but there are a limited number of tickets for the lower level. There is also a "Senior Spirit" section for those students.

Once a ticket is requested, an e-mail will be sent to the student's MIX account verifying the ticket reservation.

If the tickets requested exceeds the tickets available, the tickets will be awarded on a loyalty-based lottery.

For each football game a student goes to, he or she receives points by validating his or her ticket.

Only 20 percent of the seniority loyalty points are carried over from the 2009-10 school year, though.

This is to allow a fair chance for freshmen to receive tickets in a lottery.

"It's important for freshmen to know the more games they attend, the better their chances are of receiving a ticket that go into lottery," Wells said. "It doesn't guarantee you anything, but the more points you have by attending some of the early season games that aren't in as high demand, the better chances there are to get a ticket to some of the more highly thought-of games."

In an NBA Draft-type lottery, the more games a student has gone to, the more entries that student will have in the lottery. Wells said a lottery situation happens several times in a season.

"You're in a system where there is more demand than there is supply," Wells said. "Any time you have more people who want tickets than the number of tickets available, the people who don't receive a ticket are going to be upset."

When tickets are handed out, an e-mail will be sent to the student's MIX e-mail account telling him or her to print out the ticket.

Go back to www.WVUgame.com, and sign in using the username described earlier, but this time click on "claim ticket." Students have two days to claim and print your ticket, and all unclaimed tickets will be taken away.

The ticket is used to enter the game, along with a valid WVU ID card. The student entrance is along the east side of the Milan Puskar Stadium. No other photo ID is accepted, so a student must bring his or her Mountaineer ID card to enter the stadium.

Gates open 90 minutes prior to games. The student gates will be labeled "Maniacs/upper deck" and "lower deck/senior spirit."

Lines usually begin to form two hours before the start time, but that varies based on the relevance and the time of the game.

Because all student seating is general admission, there are no assigned seats.