SALT LAKE CITY -- Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson often has said that one of his top priorities every year is to fill Heinz Field to capacity for Panthers football games.

He may get his wish this year as the school closes in on a full-season sellout for only the second time in its history.

Pitt has sold all 10,000 of its student tickets and about 40,000 of its allotted season-ticket packages, which means the school is about 5,000 short of a full-season sellout.

"A big part of the momentum we've had is with the students," Pederson said. "We have sold out all of those tickets, and we are at about 60,000 season tickets right now, meaning we're not likely to have any single-game tickets left after the first home game next weekend."

The capacity at Heinz Field for Pitt football games is roughly 65,000, and Pitt allots 5,000 tickets for opposing teams and about 5,000 more for corporate sponsors and others such as band members, players' families and other complimentary seats.

That leaves about 55,000 available to sell, and 10,000 of those go to the students, which means the target number for season-ticket packages is about 45,000 to achieve a sellout.

Last year, the school sold a total of 44,000 in regular season-ticket packages and student tickets, which means the number of season-ticket packages sold was 34,000 -- 6,000 less than the school has already sold for this season.

Some single-game tickets are left for the New Hampshire game Sept. 11, and Pederson said fans who purchase those will have the option to roll those tickets into a season-ticket package by paying the difference between the price of the ticket and the price of a season-ticket package.

"But there is a caveat and that is, at the rate things are going, there won't be that option because it is first-come first-served basis," Pederson said. "I think that is what we've all worked so hard to achieve -- that [single-game] tickets wouldn't be a possibility because the season is sold out."

Pederson said even if the school doesn't sell another season-ticket package this year, it already has achieved the second-highest number of packages sold in school history. The only year that was better was 2003, when the school sold out its season-ticket packages.

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