Penn State announced yesterday that single game tickets for football will go on sale July 30 at 10 a.m….but there’s a catch.

The ticket office has already sold approximately 21,000 student season tickets and an even larger number of regular season tickets. The rest of the tickets for the seven game home slate are available for single purchase on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The 2013 public single game ticket prices are:

• Green Zone (lower midfield) – Not available
• Black Zone (between 30-yard lines) – $140 per ticket
• Red Zone (10 to 30-yard lines) – $110 per ticket
• Blue Zone (end zones to 10 yard-lines) – $70 (bench) and $74 (chairback) per ticket

Except….

Please note- fans buying MICH tix must also buy same number of EMU; fans purchasing NEB tix must also buy same number of Kent State tickets.

— Penn State Athletics (@GoPSUsports1) July 23, 2013

Yes — you read that correctly. If you want to see either Michigan or Nebraska — the only two elite teams on this year’s schedule — you’ll need to smile (well, that part’s probably optional) and pony up another $70-140 for an Eastern Michigan or Kent State ticket that can be had on the secondary market for half that price right now. Plus, it’s a virtual inevitability that scalping prices will go down drastically as the game gets closer.

To be fair, this type of bullshittery is common at other schools across the country. Michigan’s dynamic pricing scale has fans schlepping out $195 for Notre Dame and $175 for Ohio State single game tickets, and they don’t even throw in an Akron ticket for your troubles. Heck, even Pitt — which gets about as many fans as the State College Spikes do on a weekend — jacks up the prices for Notre Dame and its ACC opponents.

For much of the last decade, Penn State has been better than that. But average attendance peaked at 108,917 in 2007* and has decreased ever since. Unrest after the Sandusky revelations and the enormously unpopular STEP program led to the lowest attendance last year since the stadium renovations in 2001, despite an inspiring performance on the field. This, of course, all comes with a cost.

(*pretty impressive for not even winning a game)

Whether you use official Penn State avenues to secure tickets this year or buy them on the secondary market, I would  certainly advocate going to as many games as you can — even for the Kent  States and Eastern Michigans of the college football world. The current team deserves our support and prospective recruits certainly wouldn’t be very impressed to see the seating bowl half full at kickoff.