Penn State Athletics hasn’t nailed its decision-making over the past few weeks, and it didn’t do anything to improve on that Wednesday night.

Penn State football announced it will welcome a “very limited number” of general fans to Beaver Stadium Friday to watch its final spring practice in person. Although that sounds like an exciting prospect for folks to get back in the stadium for the first time in over a year, the problem lies in how the Nittany Lions announced the news.

There was no press release or big announcement on Twitter. Instead, the news was released via Instagram story. The team’s Instagram account shared a notice at approximately 8 p.m. Wednesday night — and that was it, folks.

If you managed to check on your followers’ stories Wednesday night, then you luckily saw this and were able to grab your free tickets for a pod of three people. If you were one of the many who didn’t see this, however, you were left refreshing a screen to no avail. Tickets for Friday night’s practice appeared to be sold out shortly after the news went public on platforms other than the Nittany Lions’ story.

I absolutely understand the fact that this is a practice. At the end of the day, it’s not as if folks who saw the announcement late are missing out on something like the White Out. However, Wednesday night’s bizarre, under-the-table way of sharing the news was just another example of Penn State Athletics’ brutal communication skills over the past few weeks.

Things started off ugly when the university announced it would welcome just the Class of 2024 to a spring practice on Saturday, April 17, leaving seniors out in the dust. After taking plenty of flak for that one, Penn State eventually decided to welcome only seniors taking at least one in-person class to the final spring practice this Friday. However, the university suddenly came to its senses about that strange, in-person-only rule and decided to make all seniors eligible, regardless of what classes they’re taking.

If you can keep up with all of that, we now end up here. The general public is welcome, but Penn State announced the decision in the quietest way possible.

It is just a practice, yes. But why not at least send out an email to your students so they can see the news immediately? It’s great that seniors and freshmen will get a chance in Beaver Stadium, but sophomores and juniors haven’t been there in over a year, either. At least give them a fair shot at the rush to get tickets.

We don’t know how Penn State came to this decision. But now, it looks like it was hastily made and with little to no planning. This is a big school, in case you needed a reminder. There are more than 40,000 undergraduate students at University Park and roughly 700,000 living alumni.

When everyone is given the opportunity to get into Beaver Stadium for a practice that takes place in two days, you’d like to think a little more organization would be involved in how the decision is made public.