Notre Dame students aren't the only ones clamoring for extra football tickets.
On the heels of the squad's second consecutive road victory over a defending conference champion - the Irish knocked off rival Michigan in Ann Arbor Saturday - the Notre Dame ticket office announced that it was forced to mail over $5.2 million in refunds to alumni whose lottery numbers weren't pulled in the annual alumni ticket drawing.
Alumni who donate at least $100 every year have the opportunity to request up to two tickets to each game on the Irish schedule.
Over 33,000 tickets are available for home games, while the ticket office received 5,000 tickets to each of the first two road games.
All six Notre Dame home games - Michigan State (Sept. 20), USC (Oct. 15), BYU (Oct. 22), Tennessee (Nov. 11), Navy (Nov. 12) and Syracuse (Nov. 19) - were officially sold out as the ticket office received more requests than the allotted 33,000 tickets.
Notre Dame's showdown with bitter rival No. 1 USC in mid-October was the most requested game - 54,437 tickets were requested, over 20,000 more than available. The nearly 55,000 requests mark the fourth highest total in the history of Notre Dame Stadium.
Following USC, the home opener against Michigan State was the second most popular home game (49,521 requests).
In addition, alumni requested more seats than available for every Irish road contest, with the exception of the final regular season game against Stanford (Nov. 26) in Palo Alto, Ca., where the office was able to fulfill all ticket requests.
Michigan was the most-requested road game (14,645), followed by the season opener Sept. 3 against Pittsburgh at Heinz Field - a 42-21 Notre Dame victory.
