This got caught in the Tier 3 web last week, but, hey, if you can exhume a 26-year-old story for gain, then surely I can do the same with a five-day-old tale about changes at Mountaineer Field.

Season ticket sales are going to check in below the number you’re accustomed to seeing and the cynic might think the areas closest to the field and in plain sight of television cameras might not look or, more importantly, sound that impressive.

That’ll happen when you go 7-6 and when you lose soooo much on offense. Truth be told, it’s the same kind of conversation, though on the complete opposite side of the table, for what happened last season. WVU came off the Orange Bowl win and took that momentum with Geno, Tavon and Stedman into the inaugural Big 12 season.

The numbers are subject to the circumstances.

But WVU now has some options for ticket sales and the 2013 season. There is no home game with a huge ticket allotment for the opponent. There are extra season tickets. The Mountaineers are thus bending a little to help people see the team in person.

Season tickets are now available to people who want to join the MAC, as well as people who don’t want to join the MAC, which means they don’t have to fork over the donation. There are three-game mini-packages for a third straight season and there are single-game and season tickets available in a new, user-friendly area.

One of the three ways to get season tickets is new this season. In the third year of beer sales at Mountaineer Field, WVU is introducing a block of about 1,110 seats in a designated alcohol-free area called the Family FunZone.

“A lot of the feedback we heard throughout the beer sale process and when this was being planned the first two years was related to, ‘It’d be nice to have an area in the stadium that’s alcohol free,’ ” Wells said. “We made that a priority, but there were some variables at play there.”

In short, the Mountaineers have tickets to spare this year. They’re not locked into large allotments to visiting teams like Marshall (5,300 tickets) or LSU (5,000) in non-conference play. Visiting Big 12 teams get 3,850, which is less than what visiting Big East teams were to receive.

“Logistically, a number of things helped us open a full section for this season that had been a part of the visiting team’s allotment,” Wells said. “We wanted to work with fans to accommodate them as best as we could, but we needed things to open up operationally and logistically.”