The Penn State football team may be 2-0 thus far in the season, but the PSU athletic department -- specifically when it comes to the new football ticket system -- is 0-2.

Because the athletic department failed to update all of the student records, week one saw a good number of students spending a good chunk of their time at the resolution booth trying to solve their ticketing woes.

Week two saw even more system malfunction when, in a rush to get students into the game as smoothly as possible, Gate A's defunctory swipe system let anyone with a student ID+ card into the game whether or not they had paid for a ticket.

Obviously going paperless isn't as simple as the athletic department thought it would be last year.

To be fair, it is still only September, and anyone who expected the system to run flawlessly might have been naïve. However, it's doubtful that anyone thought the system would be this problematic the first two weeks at home.

One year ago, the announcement was made that the 2009 football season would see a new ticket system, and it's hard to understand why there are so many kinks in the system when they had a year to prepare. Right now the final product that is our new ticket system seems rushed, difficult to manage and ripe with opportunity for error.

The system does have its benefits when it comes to pricing and scalping, though. More students have big-game tickets at a fair price and don't have to deal with scalpers, but ticket prices for lesser matchups are averaged upward. The issue of scalping isn't entirely off the table either. While the new forwarding system makes it harder to scalp tickets, it doesn't -- and can't be expected to -- stop money from being exchanged under the table. This system hasn't made it impossible for students to scalp; it just made it more cumbersome.

The fact of the matter is that the Penn Staters pride themselves on having the best student section in the country. Is it too much to ask for a reliable and fair ticketing system that will work on gameday and effectively weed out scalping? The fans deserve that much.

It's still early in the season, so let's hope for the athletic department's sake and, most importantly, the students' sake, that the third time is a charm come Saturday against Temple.