The laws of supply and demand dictate that if you're consistently selling out your stadium, your tickets are priced too low. You could be charging more and people would still pay it. Eventually, at some price point (we'll call this X), you have maxed out what people will pay for your tickets/goods/services. Up to and at X, the cost of a ticket is equal to or less than the benefits that buying a ticket provides. Above X, the benefits that buying a ticket would provide become less valuable than the opportunity cost to the consumer and so the consumer doesn't buy that ticket anymore, probably, unless he's a real sucker like me who has a need to watch the Ole Ball Coach get pwned in person. As achieving equilibrium between a full stadium and Ticket Price X for a diverse group of 100,000+ people is borderline impossible, ideally you want your stadium to be slightly less than full for every game. Anything above 100k is a total victory. The 2,455 is basically margin from a financial standpoint.
The fact that they're pushing season tickets now just happens to coincide with the fact that the perceived value of watching a Tennessee game is rising. They know they can get away with this thanks to recent on-field progress.
The only thing now is that the stadium experience is going to have to match the ticket prices. Parts of Neyland are very nice. Other parts need some serious work.
