BY DARRYL SLATER
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Virginia Tech is experiencing sluggish ticket sales for the Orange Bowl, which the school’s director of ticket services said is the result of the slumping economy and a larger-than-usual number of tickets available through cheaper, secondary sources.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Tech had sold about 4,700 of its 17,500 allotted tickets for the Jan. 1 game against Cincinnati. The tickets cost $125.

Tech is responsible for selling at least 8,000 tickets. If it exceeds that and still falls short of selling out its allotment, the ACC pays for the unsold tickets. If Tech fails to sell 8,000, the school pays for the unsold tickets.

“We won’t get there [to 8,000],” said Sandy Smith, Tech’s assistant athletic director for ticket services. “Sales are not brisk enough at this point.”

Tech is appearing in its 16th consecutive bowl. Most years, the school sells out its allotment, which is smaller for lesser bowls, Smith said. But Tech is used to absorbing ticket costs. When the school was in the Big East from 1991 to 2003, it had to cover the cost of all unsold tickets with no help from the conference, Smith said.

For last season’s Orange Bowl against Kansas, Tech sold about 15,000 tickets. Dolphin Stadium (capacity: 74,916) will again host the game. The announced crowd last year was 74,111.

Cincinnati has sold 13,000 to 14,000 tickets, said an athletic department spokesman. The school sold 4,300 on Dec. 8, the day after the Bearcats accepted an invitation to their first Bowl Championship Series game. The $537,500 haul marked the biggest cash day in the history of Cincinnati football.

Smith knew the economy would affect this year’s sales at Tech, but he still expected to have sold more tickets by this point. One reason Tech hasn’t, he said, is that Hokie fans can buy better seats for cheaper prices through Web sites such as eBay.com and StubHub.com.

That “secondary market,” as Smith called it, is flooded this year because the Orange Bowl also sold tickets to the national championship game, which is at Dolphin Stadium on Jan. 8. Fans who purchased national championship tickets through the Orange Bowl were required to also buy a ticket to the Orange Bowl, Smith said.

So Florida and Oklahoma fans who are heading to the national championship game but have no interest in seeing the Hokies play Cincinnati began hawking their Orange Bowl tickets for cheap. “We’ve never had this type of secondary market situation previously,” Smith said.

Low interest in the game from fans not loyal to Tech or Cincinnati is understandable. With the Hokies ranked 21st in the Associated Press poll and the Bearcats ranked 12th, this will be the first bowl in the 56-game history of the BCS or the Bowl Alliance that does not include a top-10 team. The Bowl Alliance preceded the BCS from 1995-97.

SubHub on Tuesday was selling four upper-deck seats for $8 each. Two club-level sideline seats at the 20-yard line were going for $65 apiece. Smith said the club-level seats are the best in Dolphin Stadium. They are between the luxury suites and the lower deck. Tech’s allotment included no club-level seats.

Tech gets 3,000 to 3,500 lower-deck seats along the sideline, Smith said. The rest are in the end zone in the lower deck or in the upper deck. Because Tech’s fans are so familiar with the bowl ticket sales process, they know the kind of seats the school’s allotment includes, “and if they can get a better seat at essentially the same price or less through another source, they’re gonna go there,” Smith said.

Smith has spoken to representatives from “a lot” of other bowls and said many of them are struggling with ticket sales, with the exception of those that have a school near the bowl site. Like most bowls most years, Smith said, the Orange Bowl likely will distribute leftover tickets to charity groups so it can fill Dolphin Stadium as much as possible.

Watever is causing Tech’s slow sales – economic troubles, an oversaturated secondary market, the lack of enthusiasm for the matchup – they aren’t the result of limited publicity. A few days after Tech won the ACC championship on Dec. 6, the school posted a 44-second video on its Web site in which coach Frank Beamer stood in his office and earnestly encouraged fans to buy tickets.

“We really need to see Dolphin Stadium filled with orange and maroon,” Beamer said. “That would help our football team.”

A look at why Tech has sold just 4,700 of its 17,500-ticket allotment