Apportionment Board unanimously approved $10,000 for Eastern to host the first two rounds of NCAA football playoffs.

For each round, $5,000 of the additional allocation buys 1,000 student tickets, so those students can go to the game for free. Remaining student tickets cost $5, and all other tickets are $11.

Athletic director Rich McDuffie and assistant athletic director John Smith proposed the free ticket idea because they feared students accustomed to getting into games for free would not pay the $5 ticket price.

The NCAA requires that hosting schools charge for tickets, and must guarantee $30,000 total for the first round and $40,000 for the second round through actual ticket sales. McDuffie and Smith have been asking local businesses to buy tickets to give away to help reach those numbers.

McDuffie estimates a student turnout of about 2,000 to 4,000 at most football games, a little higher for Family Weekend, the Homecoming and the season opener.

Smith and McDuffie will know by Nov. 25, the last day of Thanksgiving Break, whether Eastern will host the first two rounds of playoffs.

To distribute tickets, they plan to purchase a full page ad in The Daily Eastern News that Monday with the $3,000 promotional grant they will receive from the Ohio Valley Conference.

The first round game is Dec. 1, and the second round game is Dec. 8, later this year because of postponements arising from the Sept. 11 tragedies, Smith said. The last time Eastern hosted a playoff game was 1986.

“My feeling is, I would hope students would want to go anyway, but it would be good to approve an incentive for people to go,” Jen Fanthorpe, AB chair and student vice president for financial affairs, said.

AB debated splitting the proposal into two requests for $5,000, but feared the Student Senate would only approve part of it the way it did when AB split a University Board request into two parts.

Student Senate votes on the allocation at its Wednesday meeting. Then, interim President Lou Hencken and Shirley Stewart, vice president for student affairs, review the request before sending it to the Board of Trustees.