Freshmen who were shut out of the ticket sale last week will get a second chance tomorrow. Penn State Athletics is paying its penance by releasing an additional 1,500 seats for students to make up for the Ticketmaster glitch that had many freshmen upset. The Ticketmaster website crashed for the first 25 minutes of the freshmen sale Thursday leaving many freshmen and Penn State ticket office employees helpless and locked out of the sale.

“After the successful sale of approximately 15,000 student tickets to Seniors, Juniors and Sophomores earlier in the week, we certainly did not anticipate any problems for the Freshman sale,” Penn State Athletics wrote in a letter sent to freshmen. “We apologize that the problem arose at such an important time for so many of you who had been looking forward to the chance to secure your football ticket.”

The new sale will take place tomorrow, July 2, from 7 a.m. until Noon or until the remaining allotment sells out using the regular method on Ticketmaster.

“In response to (the) error at the outset of the Freshman Season Ticket sale, we will re-conduct a first-come, first-served sale for all of those eligible for the Freshman sale and did not successfully secure a ticket on Thursday,” Penn State athletics wrote.

It was not immediately clear where these 1,500 seats will come from — whether from regular season ticket sales that haven’t sold yet or if student season tickets didn’t completely sell out. The letter seems to indicate that neither of those are true but that the student section will be overbooked in anticipation of some students inevitably not showing up.

“The famous Penn State Student Section at Beaver Stadium will continue to fill on a first-come, first served basis through Gate A for each home game,” the letter said. “If the student section surpasses capacity for any given game, as a result of the additional tickets offered, those students will be provided a game ticket to sit in an area elsewhere in Beaver Stadium set aside for student seating.”

We have a request for comment out to the ticket office to see how this will all work, especially for the big Michigan game. We’ll let you know if they respond, but for now, freshmen who missed out the first time should enjoy this rare opportunity.