San Gabriel Valley : Public Rose Bowl Tickets Get Pruned

Getting into the 1996 Rose Bowl game just got a whole lot harder.

Tournament of Roses officials say the Big Ten wants more tickets, so the public will have to make do with fewer--about 3,000 fewer, to be exact.

In previous bowls, 4,500 of the 98,000 game tickets were sold to the public through a postcard lottery.

But this year, to accommodate increased demands from the Big Ten and tour operators who sell packaged trips to the game, only 1,500 of the coveted tickets will be available to the public, said tournament Executive Director Jack French. The lottery may also be scrapped, he said.

French said the changes are a response to the 1994 Rose Bowl debacle, in which thousands of University of Wisconsin fans came to Pasadena and discovered that brokers and tour agents had oversold the event and were unable to deliver promised tickets.

In May, tournament officials decided to raise ticket prices to $75 from $48.