Four years ago, Nebraska Cornhuskers fans made national headlines when they brought 30,000 people to South Bend, Ind., for a game against Notre Dame, turning Notre Dame Stadium into a sea of red.

Nebraska fans bought the majority of the tickets from Notre Dame season ticket holders at an inflated price.

University of Pittsburgh athletic administrators are well aware of what happened at Notre Dame, but they don't expect something similar Saturday when the Cornhuskers come to town to face the Panthers at Heinz Field.

For starters, Nebraska was No. 1 when it visited Notre Dame in September 2000, and the trek to South Bend is only about 500 miles from Lincoln. This Nebraska team is unranked and coming off a home loss to Southern Mississippi. Plus, the trip to Pittsburgh is a lot longer.

But that doesn't mean that Nebraska fans, perhaps by the thousands, won't buy tickets from Pitt fans. Jim Earle, Pitt's associate athletic director for merchandising and marketing, said the selling of tickets to opposing team's fans is hard to stop.

"It's difficult to limit," Earle said. "With technology today, it's easier for fans to get tickets. There's so many [Web] sites out there. We do the best we can with it. It's a challenge. We do try and monitor Internet sites and identify who is selling the tickets."

When Pitt discovers someone selling tickets on Internet Web sites such as eBay, the athletic department sends out a notice informing the person that it is a violation of the season-ticket policy and that a season-ticket license can be revoked. The policy has been in place since last season.

"It helps," Earle said. "Some people don't realize it's a violation and that their license can be revoked, even though it says it right on the back of their tickets. Typically, they pull the tickets off for sale."

Nebraska fans had the option of purchasing season tickets to Pitt games. Season ticket packages can be bought for as low as $60. According to the Pitt ticket office about 300 season-ticket packages were mailed to residents of Nebraska.

Pitt gives each visiting team 4,000 tickets to sell to their fans. As of Monday afternoon, about 100 of those tickets remained unsold, so Huskers fans don't appear to be enamored with this game, or their team, at this point.

There also was speculation last season that Notre Dame fans would fill Heinz Field with a disproportionate number of fans. The Irish brought about 10,000 fans, or one-fifth of the crowd, for that game. It was a number Pitt could live with. A similar number of Nebraska fans could invade Heinz Field Saturday.

"The days of people buying season tickets to see opposing teams has gone by the wayside," Earle said. "We're to the point now with our football team, like our basketball team, that people are coming out to see us. That's the way it should be. I'm expecting to see a lot of blue and gold in that stadium on Saturday."

Attendance for Pitt's home opener against Ohio University last week was 46,401, which is about three-quarters capacity. Tickets remain for the Nebraska game.