Based upon early trends, the University of Hawai'i is projecting a distribution of "about 33,000-35,000 tickets" for its Sept. 4 season-opening football game with Central Arkansas, athletic director Jim Donovan said.

With 10 days remaining, Donovan and UH officials said they are "hopeful" a surge of walk-up sales in the waning days might lift the projections — which includes both sales and "comps" — higher.

UH said it has sold approximately 22,250 season tickets to date and, as of yesterday afternoon, about 400 individual game tickets for the season opener.

"When all is said and done, we may be down about 5,000 tickets from last year," Donovan said. UH reported distributing 39,446 tickets for the 2008 opener against Weber State and a turnstile count of 36,247.

The 28,173 that turned out for Nevada-Las Vegas in 2006 was the smallest season-opening crowd for UH at Aloha Stadium since joining the Western Athletic Conference in 1979.

The combination of a rare Friday night game and a Football Championship Subdivision opponent (formerly known as Division I-AA) in a tough economy are cited as reasons for the slow-moving tickets sales this year.

"If it was USC, I don't think it would be a problem," Donovan said. He speculated that many potential ticket purchasers will wait until closer to kickoff to make sure they can attend before buying a ticket.

UH said it has sold approximately 400 individual game tickets for the Oct. 24 Boise State game and about 330 each for the Nov. 28 Navy and Dec. 5 Wisconsin games.

Individual game tickets went on sale Aug. 17.

Student ticket sales for football and women's volleyball begin tomorrow at the Stan Sheriff Center Box Office and online at http://www.hawaiiathletics.com.

Last year UH said it sold 1,519 student season tickets.