A new batch of freshmen will attend their first home football game Saturday — at least, the ones who bought the right ticket plan will.The LSU Ticket Office sold the remaining 1,800 seats in Tiger Stadium’s student section to freshmen as part of one of two mini plans this season. This year is the second-straight year the Athletic Department opted to split up its remaining tickets for freshmen, offering a gold package with tickets to the Louisiana-Lafayette, Florida and Tulane games, and a purple package, which features the Vanderbilt, Auburn and Louisiana Tech games.    “The thought process was we could help a really small number of students get all the tickets, or help everyone get something,” said Tim Messa, LSU assistant director of ticket operations. “If 1,000 seats are available you’re helping 2,000 students.”The Ticket Office switched to the mini plan system before the 2008 season in anticipation of high demand caused by LSU’s 2007 national title. The ticket package freshman students get is determined by a lottery, rather than by the prior method of first-come, first-served.”Some people feel it should be a race to see who gets tickets because maybe they think it proves you’re a bigger fan,” Messa said. “The reality is that some people have class or they can’t get to a computer at that time, so this is a much fairer system.”Unfortunately, the high demand in 2008 kept many freshman from getting tickets despite splitting up the seats. Messa said roughly 4,500 requests were made for 1,000 available seats this past season, leaving about 2,500 freshmen out in the cold.”I didn’t get any tickets,” said Bryce Cohen, biology sophomore, referring to 2008. “It was a bad year. I made it to a few games. You can buy tickets if you look for them, but I haven’t been to a Southeastern Conference game yet.”Messa said the school’s supply actually exceeded demand this season. Out of about 3,000 freshmen requests for 1,800 available seats during each game, 2,400 mini packages were sold, leaving room for 600 freshmen to be offered tickets to all six games available in the package.”The first 600 names in our lottery were offered the full package,” Messa said. “We had only offered them three games, so we offered them a chance to opt out of it. If they did, we extended the offer to the next person on the list.”Ronny Strauss, mechanical engineering freshman, is one of the lucky 600. Strauss said he wanted the gold package specifically so he could attend the Florida game and ended up receiving the full season.”I like that they effectively doubled the amount of people that got tickets,” Strauss said. “However, so many of the people that I know who got tickets aren’t even football fans. To me, there should be a way to make sure that the people who are the biggest fans of LSU football get the full season ticket package, but I understand this would be impossible to do for freshmen.”Many students find the circumstances unfair, but Messa said students can check the LSU Ticket Marketplace for tickets.The Ticket Office announced Tuesday in a broadcast e-mail that single-game tickets to Vanderbilt, Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane, Louisiana Tech and Arkansas are now available.So even if this weekend isn’t the season opener for every freshman, for at least this season, every freshman has a ticket.”I’m glad I got tickets,” said Lisa Lynch, elementary education freshman. “Freshmen don’t usually get tickets, so I’m glad I got at least three.”    ————Contact David Helman at [email protected]