Crazy, crazy second half to the week.

There has been a lot of discussion and talking about people who can’t make it down to the Sun Bowl, but want to support the team. One big way that has emerged would be buying and donating tickets to local charities or organizations. Of course, that can be a lot of work to locate the right charity in El Paso, contact them and get them the tickets.

The good news is that the Pitt Athletic Department makes that rather easy to do. If you order tickets through Pitt’s website — and thus helping Pitt fill their obligations to purchase tickets — there is an option to choose to donate your tickets as you go through the process. If you call to order tickets, you have to specifically tell the agent that you want to donate the tickets.

What happens to the tickets? The Pitt Athletic Department returns them to the Sun Bowl organizers who distribute them accordingly. Why this way? Well, according to Christopher Ferris, the Associate AD for Marketing, this is required by NCAA rules. It makes some sense. That way the tickets don’t end up under the control of a particular program that might distribute them to say a recruit and his family/posse. Or resold. Just generally avoid even the appearance of or opportunity for corruption.

I want to thank Maz and Carmen for starting this conversation at the beginning of the week. The volume of the discussion shows that there was a lot of interest in helping Pitt meet their ticket obligations.