Cincinnati has sold out its entire allotment of 17,500 tickets to the Allstate Sugar Bowl and has requested more tickets.

The school sold out in a little more than three days without much public offering, since season ticket-holders gobbled up their seats for the game first.

"That's a pretty good statement for us," Cincinnati senior associate athletic director Mike Waddell said.

And that's the kind of statement a program needs to continue to attract good bowl bids. The Bearcats brought about 10,000 fans to Birmingham two years ago for the Papajohns.com Bowl. Last year, they sold 13,500 tickets from their allotment to the Orange Bowl, but Waddell said the school estimated that nearly 30,000 Cincinnati fans actually attended. Because the Orange Bowl and BCS title game tickets were sold in a bundle, many who had purchased the package for the national championship game unloaded their Orange Bowl tickets for dirt cheap on the Internet, and lots of Bearcats fans went that route, Waddell said.

But Waddell said when he talked to BCS officials this season, they expressed concern about the 13,500 number.

"That still put us in the worry category," Waddell said. "They wanted to know, 'Are they able to move tickets?'"

Waddell said Cincinnati should know by the weekend whether it will get extra tickets, and he added that there was a "substantial" waiting list for fans wanting to go. Playing Florida in an attractive destination city certainly doesn't hurt. But the program also has some questions now surrounding the coaching situation. That didn't seem to bother the Bearcats fans.

"This is kind of what all of us in the Big East are doing," Waddell said. "We're trying to establish our football reputation. Some schools had it already, some had it and lost it a little bit. Here we are, and our fan base responded that this will not be a temporary thing. Our program is established now."