STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Tickets to Thursday’s public memorial service for football legend Joe Paterno were distributed within minutes after being made available at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
It took only minutes more for pairs of the tickets to start showing up on eBay, a situation that university President Rodney Erickson called “reprehensible.”
The memorial service, scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday at the Bryce Jordan Center, is free, but because of limited space, tickets are required for admission. The BJC has capacity for 16,000 people.
The bidding on one pair of tickets reached $98,100 before the listing was removed from the auction website. Another pair sold just before 11:30 a.m. for $500 from a seller in State College.
Some comments on Twitter and elsewhere indicated that Penn Staters entered exorbitant bids in the thousands of dollars to try and draw eBay’s attention to the auctions. The auctions were removed not long after they first appeared on the site.
EBay spokeswoman Amanda Coffee told The Associated Press that the site has unspecified internal controls to remove inappropriate ads. She said eBay doesn’t “allow the sale of tickets to events in which all tickets are free to the public” and yanked ads seeking money for tickets to the memorial.
Apparently responding to criticism, the seller of the tickets for which bids neared $100,000, “mollyswimom,” added a comment to the listing at about 11:15 a.m.:
“(N)o one is forcing you to buy tickets; it is a choice,” the seller wrote. “And yes, there are much worse ways to make a dollar, judge not lest ye be judged. You do not know my situation. Thank-you.”
According to the listing, the seller was in Visalia, Calif.
Attempts to contact other sellers were unsuccessful.
Several listings for pairs of tickets appeared, then disappeared. One, out of Fort Washington, started at 99 cents and was removed before the tickets were sold.
A listing by “amishlou” out of Lancaster featured a “We love JoePa” T-shirt for sale _ with two free tickets to the memorial service. The seller said in the listing that she and her husband want to be at the service, but need the money to pay for her daughter’s wedding.
Bids in that auction soared to more than $80,000 before the listing was removed at about 12:30 p.m.
“I can’t tell you how reprehensible I find those kinds of actions,” Erickson said during his remarks Tuesday afternoon to the Faculty Senate.
“We have tried to do everything within our power to stop that, but there are certain legal limitations on what we are allowed to do,” he said.
He said he hopes anyone who profits from sale of those tickets looks “deeply within their hearts” and donate the profits to Special Olympics Pennsylvania or the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, the two charities to which the Paternos have requested donations in lieu of flowers.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
