To understand the outrage of Colorado Rockies fans today, picture this scenario:

• The Dawgs make a rare appearance in the national title game. (I know…stay with me.)
• Tens of thousands of tickets are made available by the University to the general public with no priority system. First come, first served.
• The tickets will only be distributed online through a single outlet.
• There are no alternate plans for ticket sales if something goes wrong with online sales.
• When the sale begins, the website is brought to a halt after 8.5 million hits in the first 90 minutes. Only a few hundred tickets are actually sold due to the heavy traffic.
• Georgia officials suspend the sale while they go back to the drawing board. Tens of thousands of tickets remain unsold and in limbo.

I think that the march on Athens would make what’s going on in Denver seem like a pep rally. Though this is a baseball story, I’ve found that online ticket sales have been hit or miss for college sports too. Paciolan, the company involved in the Rockies story, also manages the Georgia Tech system. If you’ve ever bought a football three-pack or Super Regional tickets through Tech, you’ve likely experienced how the Paciolan system saps precious minutes from your life moving from screen to screen. When I read that they were behind the Colorado problems, it all made sense.