Raleigh, N.C. ? The N.C. State and Kansas convoys to Orlando, Fla., will be awfully light for Monday’s Tangerine Bowl unless ticket sales spike at the last minute.
Tangerine Bowl officials were hoping to sell as many as 40,000 tickets for Monday’s game at Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, but Wolfpack and Jayhawks fans have bought less than a quarter of that amount through their universities’ ticket offices.
N.C. State has sold about 5,000 of its allotted 12,500 tickets. Kansas has sold about 2,000 of its 12,000 tickets. Both schools are responsible for selling the tickets.
Also, more than 12,500 tickets have been sold locally in Orlando, Tangerine Bowl officials reported.
“Kansas is a little farther away, so we didn’t expect the Big 12 side to do as well,” said Tom Mickle, the executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, which operates the bowl. “We’re just trying to understand. We need to figure out the lack of interest. … We thought N.C. State would do better.”
Kansas was offering free bowl-game tickets to its students. But its Student Union Activities group canceled a chartered bus for the trip after only 12 students signed up for the ride, The Lawrence-Journal-World reported. The bowl game also will be played a day after the Kansas basketball team’s trip to Reno, Nev., for the Dec. 21 Wolf Pack Holiday Classic game against Nevada.
N.C. State sold more than 26,500 tickets for its Jan. 1 Gator Bowl win over Notre Dame. Estimates for N.C. State fans who attended that sold-out game in Jacksonville, Fla., climbed as high as 40,000.
But holding a bowl game three days before Christmas has its drawbacks, Mickle acknowledged.
Tangerine Bowl officials were hoping just to fill their stadium’s lower bowl, but that would take about 48,000 fans, Mickle said.
N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said of slow ticket sales: “It’s timing as much as anything, and I hate it for the bowl. With school letting out Friday, I thought it would help. But apparently with many of our fans, there’s so much going on before Christmas.”
Two years ago, about 8,200 N.C. State fans traveled to Orlando for the Wolfpack’s 34-19 Tangerine Bowl loss to Pittsburgh on Dec. 20, 2001.
Wolfpack fan Lewis A. Saintsing, 60, of Thomasville said he and his family made the Tangerine trip two years ago. After a season that began with Bowl Championship Series aspirations but ended with a 7-5 record, Saintsing said he wasn’t ready to make a return trip.
“I was just a little too disappointed to think about going again,” Saintsing said.
The Tangerine Bowl payout is $812,000 per team. N.C. State associate athletics director Diane B. Moose said that the university could end up using as much as $125,000 from its share to cover the cost of unsold tickets in its allotment.
The ACC would help cover the cost of those unsold tickets as well, however.
Tuesday, Vance Holt and a trickle of N.C. State fans showed up at the Wolfpack Club to pick up Tangerine Bowl tickets they had purchased.
A 1975 graduate of N.C. State, Holt said that he and his wife were flying to Orlando with their children for the game. Unlike N.C. State’s last bowl trip, the Fuquay-Varina resident said that not too many of their friends were joining them in Orlando.
“Probably the biggest difference is the competition,” Holt said. “Notre Dame is a big draw, anytime.”
