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After four seasons of mediocrity, UCLA football fans can now proudly boast about a lot of rising numbers when they discuss this year’s team: Drew Olson’s passing efficiency, rushing yards gained, points scored per game and ... student ticket prices.

For UCLA’s game against Oklahoma on Sept. 17 – a 41-24 drubbing that vaulted UCLA into a top-25 spot in The Associated Press’ ranking – student ticket prices were increased to over three times their normal amount, from $8 to $25, and the price of guest tickets increased from $32 to $50.

The UCLA community is very proud of its traditions, and its sports teams are a vital part of that. After all, UCLA holds 97 NCAA titles, more than any other university in the country. But the athletic department is doing its best to bury a winning practice with a new one. And it’s called “price-gouging.”

It’s not that increasing ticket prices for big games is unheard of. UCLA-USC tickets have long been pricey, and in previous years, tickets for football games deemed “premium” have cost more.

But for those premium games, student tickets only cost $10, not even close to the price of a UCLA-Oklahoma ticket.

Athletic department officials say they raised prices to push more students to buy season ticket packages. That’s ridiculous. Most students don’t have the money to spend on packages, and they don’t always have the time to go to every game.

Of course, the more pressing reason is that the department finds itself in a budgetary hole this year. That’s unfortunate. But it’s hardly fair to punish students for it.

Keeping student tickets for individual games cheap makes it easier for the casual fan who can hop in the car and drive to the Rose Bowl on a whim. (On the other hand, students might be less inclined to hop on one of the Rose Bowl-bound buses provided by the university, which now cost $2 and have to be signed up for in advance.)

And the Central Ticket Office’s new practice of electronically tagging the Bruin Card of those who buy a football ticket package makes it impossible for several friends to split the price of one among them – a popular and now sadly defunct option that let students who couldn’t go to all the games in a package still get their money’s worth.

It’s unclear whether ticket prices will climb to unnaturally high levels again. Ironically, as the football and basketball teams improve, so too does the likelihood that tickets will get more costly.

Athletic department officials know students’ wallets have already been ransacked by rising fees, the increasing cost of living in Westwood and the price of gasoline. It would have been a nice, conciliatory gesture if they had kept the price of tickets for the UCLA-Oklahoma game low. After all, don’t we watch sports for relief and catharsis, to take our minds off more pressing – and expensive – problems?

Instead, they opted to send a different message to students: We don’t respect your loyalty, and we’re going to take you for what you’ve got.

If they truly wanted to help this institution, they would make sports more accessible to the student body – not fleece it.