Cyberspace has replaced cardboard in students’ sales kits for peddling football tickets.

Instead of hanging out on street corners with signs reading, “Need Tickets,” students with extra tickets are going online to connect with others who want them.

Students are using various electronic Web sites such as Facebook, WebCT, eBay, LiveJournal and listservs to sell their University football tickets.

On Facebook, there are at least 10 groups dedicated to selling football tickets.

But students scalping their tickets online risk the possibility of violating University Athletic Association policy.

Georgia law only prohibits scalping tickets at the event. But the Athletic Association defines scalping of student tickets as any student selling his or her ticket to another University student for an amount greater than the original price of $8, according to its Web site.

It’s a full-time job looking for students engaging in scalping and price gouging, said Kelley Lawrence, student ticket manager for the Athletic Association.

He said the Athletic Association doesn’t monitor WebCT or other sites, waiting instead until someone reports a student for scalping.

“We put that responsibility back on the students,” he said.

Students can send in information about others scalping tickets, and then the Athletic Association will look into it.

“All we need is a name or student e-mail, something tying it back to the student, and then that information is put in the file,” Lawrence said. “If Georgia is in a situation where we have a post-season game, then we would block those students’ ticket privileges.”

There are about 10 to 20 students in the file from this season, Lawrence said. Last season about 25 to 30 students were turned in.

Students also run the risk of losing future football ticket privileges, according to the Athletic Association’s Web site.

“We certainly don’t encourage scalping and we try to minimize it, but ultimately it’s the student’s responsibility,” Lawrence said.

He added that the Athletic Association was about a year away from having scanners to check IDs for student status but are apprehensive of downloading actual tickets to IDs like Auburn and Louisiana State University do.

Despite the Athletic Association’s policy, online ticket scalping has grown in popularity with networking Web sites.

The most popular Facebook group, “Buy/Sell/Trade UGA Football Tickets,” has more than 2,400 members.

Jacob Berton, a junior from Raleigh, N.C., who also works in the advertising department of The Red & Black, started the group two years ago but said its popularity is a recent development.

“At the beginning of the semester, there were only 300 to 400 members,” Berton said.

“We sent out a bulk message telling members to invite their friends.”

We wanted to try to make it bigger so there was a better market to find tickets, he said.

He started the group because he noticed there were a lot of students posting on WebCT, and it was getting in the way.

Facebook is a good outlet to set up student networks, and there’s no better student network than one used to sell football tickets, Berton said.

Another student noticed there was a need for a forum to sell tickets, among other items, and decided to create a Web site dedicated to just that.

Mike Cohen, a former University student who transferred to Georgia State University this semester, started the Web site www.collegebst.com, “the ultimate student bulletin board.”

“The idea started with textbooks,” Cohen said. “I noticed a lot of students advertising on flyers around campus that they were trying to buy or sell them and I just thought it would be great if we could have one central place to do that.”

Since starting the Web site in August, about 320 students from 24 schools nationwide have joined.

“We’ve had a lot of people on there looking for football tickets, mainly from Georgia and Nebraska,” he said.