What do you do if you are a college football program whose team fell apart last season under the pressure of ridiculously high expectations? Send out a hand-signed letter to season ticket holders apologizing for the season and asking for their support? Put together an attractive series of giveaways for next season? Cut parking prices?

(Ticket price hike forces ASU fans to cut clothing costs)

If you’re Arizona State, and you’re coming off of a season where thoughts of contending for a Pac-10 title or possibly even a national title turned into a 5-7 train wreck, none of those are in the cards. As the ARIZONA REPUBLIC reports, they are taking quite the opposite approach: raising ticket prices by as much as 50 percent for almost all seats at Sun Devil Stadium.

It might seem absurd to raise prices after a lousy season, but school officials are defending the ticket hike as necessary to keep the program competitive. (Again, they were 5-7 last season, including a home loss to UNLV, so I wonder what they consider “competitive.”) After all, if they can still afford to bring their families to games, you should be able to as well:

“We talk about the same things everybody else does,” said Stephen Ponder, ASU senior associate athletic director. “Could I do this with my family? Could I afford this? Sometimes the perceptive is we make decisions we don’t have to feel or live by. We look in the mirror.”

So be on the lookout for the new ASU advertising campaign: “Sun Devils 2009: It Can’t Be Worse Than 2008.” I knew that a lot of Sun Devils fans were glad to see Rudy Carpenter graduate, but this is ridiculous.