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Bob Donohoe had not considered trying to get tickets to this year's ACC tournament. Those are usually handed down like family heirlooms.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, he heard the ACC was putting seats on sale. So he doled out more than $1,000 for three all-session ticket books, drove to Atlanta from Winston-Salem, and -- voila! -- there he was watching from a seat in the third deck of Atlanta's Georgia Dome alongside his wife and daughter.

They had an entire section to themselves.

"We've even got our own toilets," Donohoe joked.

This may be March Madness, but the economic downturn clearly has taken a toll on attendance at most conference tournaments. The ACC sold tickets to the general public for the first time since 1966. There were thousands of empty seats at the Southeastern Conference tournament in Tampa, Fla. The Big Ten, Pac-10, Big 12 and Conference USA also reported attendance declines from previous years.

Only the Big East, which again sold out Madison Square Garden after inviting all 16 teams for the first time, managed to avoid a slide.

"When you look at everything going on in the economy, people can't afford certain things," Georgia Tech guard Lewis Clinch said after his team lost in a quarterfinal Friday. "We're thankful for what we did have here."

The ACC was caught in a two-sided predicament. This year's tournament was held at a domed football stadium capable of holding 36,000 fans even when half the building is curtained off -- about 13,000 more than when the event is played at the Greensboro Coliseum.

The league sold 26,352 tickets, each costing $363 for an 11-game book, more than any other postseason tournament but still far short of the record attendance set in 2001 when the event was last held at the Georgia Dome.

That year, the ACC averaged 36,505 per session, with a high of 40,083.

"All the fans were great," Clinch said. "It was a great atmosphere. That hasn't tapered off just because we don't have 36,000 people here."

In Tampa, the SEC averaged 11,612 for the opening round and 13,717 for the quarterfinals at the 20,500-seat St. Pete Times Forum. It didn't get any easier to pump up attendance when Kentucky and Florida, the two best draws, were eliminated before the weekend. Only 10,387 showed up for Saturday's semifinals.

"I don't think you're turning on the TV and seeing sold-out conference tournaments or conference tournaments at complete capacity anywhere," said Rob Higgins, executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. "There's not a lot of expendable dollars out there."