In just two days of sales, students have purchased more Gophers football season tickets than they did for the entire 2008 season. Tickets went on sale Saturday at 7 a.m. for $83, and thousands of students woke up early to reserve their seat. Around 3,800 students bought tickets within the first hour they went on sale, athletics ticket manager Brent Holck said . As of 10 a.m. Sunday, Holck estimated about 6,300 tickets had been sold. He said his department would have to check that everyone is a student and only purchased one ticket. Last year the University sold between 5,000 and 6,000 student season tickets, Holck said. The student section will hold 10,000 students, and the remaining 2,000 tickets are being held for incoming first-years, transfer students and graduate students. They will go on sale in early September. With such a high demand already, Holck said it is not out of the question to offer more student season tickets in the future. âÄúWeâÄôre very open to adapting however we need to, to make sure that students feel like theyâÄôre being taken care of,âÄù he said. The ticket sales for 2009 are more impressive because each student could only buy one ticket, Holck said. In past years including 2008, students could buy two tickets. In a previous interview, Jason LaFrenz, director of marketing and ticketing, said the athletics department wanted to give as many students as possible an opportunity to see games at the new stadium. Athletics director Joel Maturi said he hopes the rest of the tickets sell out, but he understands that some students might not buy them with the current economic situation. âÄúItâÄôs a challenging financial time, we understand that, but we do think itâÄôs a fairly low-priced ticket in comparison to our counterparts in the Big Ten,âÄù Maturi said. The $83 ticket was the second lowest in the Big Ten, behind only Indiana University, which charges $40. Marketing junior Curt Baker said he was really surprised with the low ticket price and was expecting tickets to cost between $125 and $150. Baker said he woke up at 6:55 a.m. on Saturday to buy his ticket as soon as sales opened. Due to the volume of people logging on, Baker said he had to wait 10 minutes for the site to let him make the purchase. LaFrenz said the athletics department worked with people in the Institute of Technology to help add servers to make the process run smoothly for students. Some students experienced delays in buying tickets, but Maturi said he thinks everyone that wanted to buy tickets had a chance. He said the online buying system came out of discussions between student leadership and the athletics department. Tickets did not sell out, but Baker said he didnâÄôt want to risk sleeping in and missing an opportunity to have tickets at the new stadium. âÄúItâÄôs really hard to estimate the demand,âÄù he said. âÄúI didnâÄôt want to risk not getting them for my senior year.âÄù Football isnâÄôt meant to be played indoors, Baker said, and the Metrodome was not a good venue for college sports. He said this is the first year he has bought season football tickets and is excited to for the new stadium to open.