BCS National Championship Game Ticket Prices Are As Insane As You Expected

With it looking more and more like the Alabama Crimson Tide will be heading to New Orleans to play the LSU Tigers on Jan. 9, many folks in the Yellowhammer State have started thinking about how they are going to get to see the game. Last year, ticket prices for the BCS National Championship Game got seriously out of hand (as I can personally attest). This year it looks like we could see more of the same.

Roll Bama Roll started watching the interest in Alabama tickets for the 2011 title contest last February when the Sugar Bowl's Team Ticket Reservation Marketplace went active. This is the system set up where you purchase reservations to buy tickets to the game at face value if your team makes it. Alabama fans, as you might expect, snapped up that deal right quick.

With just a few days remaining before the championship contenders are announced, these reservations are going for a pretty penny. For Alabama, Terrace reservations (the nosebleed deck) now start at $995 and the best seats, Club Sideline, start at $2,500. For LSU, Terrace prices begin at $890 and Club Sideline at $3,000. For OSU, these numbers are $95 and $500 respectively.

So, what are the actual ticket prices looking like on the resale market? We took a look at a number of the online secondary market aggregator services to get an idea and what we found wasn't pretty.

Now each of the services we found uses a different system to collect their stats so there is a significant spread in their findings. For example, FanSnap shows more than 3,000 tickets on sale through various online vendor services while TiqIQ -- SB Nation's ticket partner -- indicates there are only about 600. Despite the differences in methodology, the range of reported prices are pretty close together.

FanSnap indicates that average ticket price is around $2,700 with approximately 3,000 up for sale. This number was even higher a week or so ago (about $2,090) when the number of tickets was significantly less. The cheapest ticket they can find is $1,475. SeatGeek puts the basement price at $1,670 for a high nosebleed ticket with lower levels of the Superdome demanding $3,000 to $4,000. TiqIQ indicates there are about 600 tickets available for between $1,580 and $4,723.

If you remember, the going prices for tickets to see the matchup between these two teams a month ago were, far and away, the priciest ticket of the regular season. It's not looking like the predicted rematch between them in BCS National Championship Game will be much different.