Student Body Left (Out?)

Eager Penn State students pitched more than 100 tents outside Beaver Stadium and slept there for a week before football games last season against Ohio State and Wisconsin.

At Arkansas two weeks ago, students began lining up outside Reynolds Razorback Stadium three days before their team’s opener against USC.

Those kinds of fanatic early-bird arrivals are unheard of at the Coliseum for USC home games. But a new limit on student seats this season might spur change, and possibly some game-day anger, beginning on Saturday when the fourth-ranked Trojans play 19th-ranked Nebraska.

USC, which established attendance records in each of the last three seasons, has reduced student seating from about 12,000 a game to 8,000. School officials said the change was made after determining that an average of about 6,500 students attended home games last season.

“We have data to show this should be plenty,” said Steve Lopes, a senior associate athletic director.

Some USC students are not so sure.

“I think it’s a money grab,” said Philip DeCastro, a senior who has attended games since his freshman year.

USC’s prosperity on the field in recent seasons has been eclipsed perhaps only by the gold rush at the turnstiles.

The Trojans have not lost at the Coliseum since early in the 2001 season, a streak of 27 games. Last year, USC averaged 90,812 for six home dates.

USC has sold more than 57,000 season tickets this season, including packages to donors, non-donors and faculty, Lopes said. Demand for tickets is so great, the school had to stop selling its Cardinal and Gold support-group packages because there was no more room in the 92,000-seat Coliseum.

The reduction in student seating allows USC to sell tickets for seats that often went unused on game day.

“I can understand the logic ... but I would feel disappointed if I was one of the people who didn’t get in,” junior Jessalyn Starbuck said.

USC officials said the reduction in student seating was made after studying data from last season. The UCLA game, for example, drew a season-high 7,500 students.

“In the past it was just assumptions,” said Jose Eskenazi, associate athletic director in charge of marketing. “It just made sense to analyze it properly and have an accurate read.”

USC culled its data from students’ use of bar-coded “spirit cards.” The cards sell for $135 and serve as general-admission, non-reserved tickets for most regular-season home athletic events.

Student seats for this year’s Notre Dame home football game, however, will be available only through a lottery, said Lori White, an associate vice president for student affairs. Tickets for road games and bowl games also are available through lotteries.

USC implemented the bar-coded system last year and sold about 12,000 spirit cards, Eskenazi said.

When stadium gates open, students swipe the cards as they enter at Gate 28 on the northeast side of the Coliseum. Students run or walk to seats in prescribed sections that begin near the 40-yard line and extend toward the peristyle end of the stadium.

This season, school officials said, some upper-level student seats and the marching band have been moved to the “Trojan Nation” bleachers behind the east end zone.

John Henderson, assistant athletic director in charge of game management, said the athletic department would distribute information in the school newspaper and through e-mails to make students aware of the importance of arriving early to guarantee a seat.

If more than 8,000 show up, latecomers will be turned away.

“We’re going to keep an eye on it and have staff out there,” Henderson said. “The system is on a computer, so we can track how many are in the stadium and work from there.”

USC’s reduction in student seating contrasts with some other major programs.

At Ohio State, which has about 50,000 undergraduates and graduate students at its Columbus campus, school officials are straining to keep up with demand for tickets at Ohio Stadium, which seats 102,329.

A record 31,000 students ordered reserved season tickets this season, an increase of more than 5,000 from last year, said Bill Jones, Ohio State’s senior director of ticketing.

“It’s pretty much our philosophy that if students want tickets, they get them,” he said. “We don’t cut them back.”

Penn State sold all 21,000 of its student tickets in a record 13 days in June. Students shut out were so upset, they mounted an electronic petition, asking for more student seats in the 107,282-seat stadium.

Arkansas makes 10,000 general-admission tickets available to students for $1. Tennessee distributes about 14,000 student tickets free.

Nebraska allots about 7,800 seats for students and the band at 81,000-seat Memorial Stadium, said Diane Mendenhall, assistant athletic director for development and ticketing. The reserved student season tickets are sold for $147, about $200 less than a regular season-ticket package, and there is a waiting list of about 200, Mendenhall said.

DeCastro, the USC senior, typically arrives two to three hours before kickoff to ensure getting a good seat. But, he said, he might show up earlier because of the new policy.

DeCastro added that any student who purchased a spirit card should be entitled to a seat.

“This is the biggest part of the year,” he said. “If they’re going to take that away from students, it’s going to detract from the student-body experience, and I wouldn’t want to do that.”

*

gary.klein@latimes.com