Here’s why only 200 Clemson students got tickets to the ACC championship

More than 4,000 Clemson University students – 4,860, to be exact – requested tickets through the university for a seat at the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game Saturday.

Only 200 of those students actually got tickets to the game between the Tigers and the Miami Hurricanes.

Clemson and Miami were each allotted 5,500 tickets to sell or give away for Saturday’s championship game, said Amy Yakola, executive associate commissioner and chief of external affairs for the ACC. The 5,500 allotment has been in place for the past few years, and schools are permitted to divvy up those tickets however they’d like, she said.

Clemson opted to sell 200 of those tickets for $65 apiece to students, though the university attempted to request more from the ACC, said Joe Galbraith, assistant athletics director at Clemson.

The university also gave 500 tickets to the Tiger Band, 1,300 to “accommodate player guests and staff tickets,” and 3,500 to IPTAY donors and season ticket holders at prices that ranged from $128-$214, Galbraith said.

Carter Toole, Miami’s associate athletic director for communications and digital strategy, said in an email the University of Miami allocated 236 of its 5,500 tickets to students.

Universities with teams playing in the ACC championship are required to purchase thousands of tickets and are responsible for selling them, oftentimes in less than a week, Galbraith said. In the past, that number has been as high as 12,000 tickets, though in recent years the ACC has opted to hold colleges responsible for less than half of that.

“Selling 12,000 tickets in possibly a week … is really difficult,” Galbraith said. “I think even for Clemson, if we had a choice, we’d rather be responsible for selling a (lower) number.”

Tickets to the ACC Championship Game went on sale in July, Yakola said, and were sold throughout the last several months – even though the teams playing in the championship hadn’t been identified.

This year’s game is the ACC’s 13th championship game and will be the seventh title game held at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, Yakola said. The stadium, which is home to the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, has seating for upwards of 70,000. ACC title games, including Saturday’s, have sold out four times, Yakola said.

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Here’s why only 200 Clemson students got tickets to the ACC championship."