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The inspiration for Zona Zoo began, innocently enough, when former UA student senator Peter Wand stepped inside Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium. September 2002.

Six entire sections, about 15,000 students, wore Badger-red T-shirts in the 78,500-seat stadium. Noise rarely relented. The student sections became a massive mosh pit, with UW students partying to House of Pain's "Jump Around.'' Rather than do the wave, Badger students perfected a rowdy synchronized rowing routine.

Six sections of red energy. Not an empty space anywhere.

Wand was buzzed. Wisconsin routed Arizona 31-10 that day, and he could not let the feeling go.

"I remember thinking, 'If we could ever get something like that at Arizona Stadium, it would change the culture of game day,' '' said Wand, now a Scottsdale attorney. "But even when the concept was approved, we were pretty nervous. We didn't know if enough students would show up.''

Oh, baby, did they show.

Zona Zoo has become Saturday Night Live at Arizona Stadium. With prime, lower-level space for about 10,000, it has become the largest student section in Pac-10 football. It has surpassed the 5,670 at Oregon's routinely sold-out Autzen Stadium, and exceeds USC's 9,000 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Almost overnight, Zona Zoo overflowed, far beyond capacity, far beyond expectations. Several hundred students were denied entrance in Saturday's home opener against NAU. It became a story to rival the game itself.

You would have thought it was Penn State, where 20,732 student tickets were sold out in 59 minutes last month, a first-come, first-serve electronic rush that left another 27,000 waiting in a virtual Internet line.

Football tickets in demand at the UA? Who thought we'd ever see the day?

What will happen if the Wildcats ever have another winning season?

The Zona Zoo has joined some elite college football company. Football-mad Clemson allots 11,000 student seats. Perennial Top 25 contender West Virginia has 12,500. Iowa: 10,500.

Washington, which for 25 years traditionally has been the Pac-10's attendance leader, regularly filling Husky Stadium's 72,000 seats, allows space for a mere 7,000 students. "We don't oversell," said Chip Lydum, a UW assistant athletic director.

Despite that unpleasant student-Tasered story, this is an athletic director's dream come true. Demand outpaces supply. The perception is that Arizona Stadium has become the place to be.

And the Wildcats did not have to win to make it happen.

At USC, for example, the Trojans for years allotted 12,000 student seats. Didn't matter. They rarely were filled, unless UCLA or Notre Dame was at the Coliseum.

But once Pete Carroll pushed the Trojans back to national title contention, the USC front office reduced the student section to 8,000 seats. Hundreds of students were turned away at the gates last year, often after waiting in line for two or three hours.

After an off-season of negotiating, USC agreed to add 600 student seats. The students still protested. Another 600 were allotted. In L.A., it all spins on winning. Yet Arizona still has about 1,000 more student tickets, per game, than the Trojans. And it is not enough.

This is a significant change. The home opener in 1999, coming off a 12-1 season, the Wildcats' student section, then unnamed, had 3,000 empty seats for a game against Middle Tennessee State.

In 1994, debuting at home on the heels of a 10-2 season and an opening win at Georgia Tech — and ranked in the Top 10 — Arizona failed to fill 2,000 student-section seats.

And now, coming off a dreadful opening loss at BYU, a nonwinning UA team cannot find enough space to fit all the students who want to watch an NAU game.

This is a pleasant problem that others, UCLA, for example, would enjoy.

The Bruins have sold about 6,000 student season tickets this year in the massive Rose Bowl (capacity: about 92,000).

Arizona students walk a few hundred yards to the Zona Zoo; Bruin students must fight ridiculous freeway traffic.

"It's a bit of a challenge when your stadium is 29 miles from campus,'' said Marc Dellins, UCLA's sports information director. "We have the ability to expand to 10,000 (students), if needed.''

The Pac-10 does not keep records for smallest student delegation at any football game. But in 1997, the UCLA-Oregon State game at the Rose Bowl included 916 Bruin students. And UCLA was ranked No. 17 at the time.

Must have been a nice day on the beach.

Oregon State allots 6,000 tickets to its students. Arizona State expects to sell about 9,000 student tickets this year.

"We can accommodate an unlimited number of students. We really don't have a limit,'' said Mark Brand, ASU's associate athletic director for communications. "Our stadium is so big (71,706) that we could handle large student turnouts.''

Meanwhile, the Zona Zoo rocks. In the first half, it is an all-red, all-full place to see and be seen.

The trick now is getting a football team that can keep them in the stadium for the second half.

Check out an interactive guide of Arizona Stadium at azstarnet.com/wildcats