On the opening day of the ACC Tournament last year in Tampa, it was possible to walk up to the ticket office at the St. Pete Times Forum and purchase a complete booklet of tournament tickets for face value.

That almost certainly won't be the case in Charlotte this week.

“It’s going to be a challenge ticket-wise in Charlotte,” Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman said recently. “It’ll be something like 400 or 500 fewer tickets when we go to Charlotte than when we go to Greensboro. And when every school has to leave 300 or 400 people at home who have been very generous to the program, that creates some angst and that can be problematic for programs.”

The 2008 ticket situation stems from two unusual realities at the ACC Tournament: (1) This is the first year in which all 12 conference members have full ticket allotments, after the three expansion schools (Boston College, Miami, Virginia Tech) received partial allotments in recent years as part of the expansion negotiations, and (2) This year's location, the new Charlotte Bobcats Arena, is much smaller than most ACC Tournament venues.

A school's full ticket allotment to last year's tournament in Tampa consisted of more than 1,700 booklets. (Some schools returned some booklets because of inadequate demand from their boosters, creating the opening-day availability at the St. Pete Times Forum ticket office. ACC Tournament tickets haven't been available to the general public for early purchase since 1966.) A full allotment this year consists of approximately 1,450 booklets.

"(The ticket shortage) is a challenge for every school. We are working through it," Wellman said. "Each of the schools and the conference have had to pull their belts a little tighter with the smaller ticket allotment. This is one of the good reasons going to the Georgia Dome from time to time is good, because it opens up ticket opportunities for each school.”

The extreme nature of this year's ticket crunch is not likely to happen again any time soon.

Charlotte is not scheduled to get the ACC Tournament again through 2015. By then, the ACC will be firmly into a rotation that calls for the event to shift between Greensboro (2010-11, 2013-15), with the largest seating capacity for a traditional basketball arena in the ACC region, and Atlanta (2009, 2012), which offers significantly more seating capacity in a dome setting at the Georgia Dome.

Conference officials made the decision last May to utilize the venues with the largest seating capacities, now that the league has to split up the tickets 13 ways — 12 equal allotments for the 12 member institutions, plus the conference office’s slice of the pie.

Greensboro Coliseum has a seating capacity of 23,500 for basketball. The Georgia Dome has held as many as 60,046 for basketball, and drew as many as 40,083 for one session of the 2001 ACC Tournament. It averaged 36,505 that year.

Charlotte’s new arena lists a seating capacity of 19,026 for NBA games, with the ability to add seats up to 20,200 for the ACC Tournament. The decision to build an arena of that size focused on enticing the NBA back to the city, so it valued luxury suites and other NBA-style preferences rather than total seating capacity. Charlotte Bobcats Arena was built in 2003, before ACC expansion, and opened in 2005.

All-Time ACC Tournament Venues (1954-2007)

21 — Greensboro, N.C.

13 — Raleigh, N.C.

11 — Charlotte, N.C.

4 — Atlanta, Ga.

3 — Landover, Md.

1 — Tampa, Fla.

1 — Washington, D.C.

Future ACC Tournament Venues

2008 — Charlotte

2009 — Atlanta

2010 — Greensboro

2011 — Greensboro

2012 — Atlanta

2013 — Greensboro

2014 — Greensboro

2015 — Greensboro

NOTE: The ACC has a clause stating that it can opt out of Greensboro to go elsewhere once in the three-year span from 2013-15, but if so the 2016 tournament automatically would be awarded to Greensboro.