Season ticket sales soar, expectations are high as Fresno State football kicks off this week
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The momentum that comes with a 12 win season and bowl victory over a PAC-12 opponent has brought through the roof expectations for Jeff Tedford's Bulldogs in 2019
"It was a good year last year but this is a whole new year, a whole new team," Tedford said Monday.
The team opens the year on the road against at one of college football's most storied programs.
Director of Athletics Terry Tumey and former UCLA Defensive lineman admits there's a little extra motivation for this week's season opener at USC.
"Just knowing what our student-athletes will be facing and how dominate they have been historically," Tumey said. "It's going to be a great challenge for this institution. I'm excited."
And so are the fans.
A large contingency of Red Wavers are expected at the Coliseum Saturday while University officials say they're seeing an uptick in season tickets for this year's home schedule.
"We've already surpassed what we did as an entire season last year," Tumey said. "We're almost at 18,000 season tickets at this point so we're market-ably above where we were last year."
Fans will notice multi-million dollar improvements at Bulldog Stadium when the team opens its home schedule September 7th. New field turf and stadium lights were brought in during the offseason.
While student support appears to be at an all-time high. Two student buses to USC sold out in a matter of hours
"It is a new team, it is a younger team that hopefully, they gain that experience going against a USC team that is as experienced as they are," said Fresno State student, Hisham Qutob. "However I believe in the Bulldogs and I believe that we can take it away. It's just going to be a great opening game for the rest of the season that shows just how high we can set ourselves going down this season."
Saturday's game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. and will air on ESPN.
ABC30 will be with the Bulldogs in Los Angeles every step of the way beginning Friday.
