Tickets hard to come by, and expensive too

With the 2009 BCS Championship Game set to take place in Miami on January 8, many of the biggest college football fans are already looking to get their hands on tickets for the national title game. Though the tickets for this past year's BCS Title Game between LSU and Ohio State had face values of under $300, the street value on site in New Orleans was much higher for those without tickets already in hand.

A scalper standing just northwest of the Superdome on Poydras said the tickets he found were too expensive for him to buy for resale. He said others were offering him upper-level tickets for $700 each, and he was looking to buy tickets for closer to $300.

The highest reported price came from a scalper standing at a corner of Tulane Avenue and LaSalle. He said he had just sold a pair of lower-level tickets for $2,200, and he was about to acquire a pair of lower-level tickets that he was ready to sell for $1,500.

-Nola.com

A small portion of each year's seats are provided to the general public before the college football regular season even begins. A majority of the tickets are then handed out to corporate sponsors, with the remaining allotment dished out between the two participating schools. That number, though, is not nearly enough to accomodate the number of fans who want to travel to see their team play.

LSU, for example, was given just 16,000 tickets for this past year's championship game, and that fanbase packs over 90,000 into Tiger Stadium for each and every home game.

The lesson? Get your tickets ahead of time, if possible, or expect to pay even higher prices on the streets once gameday rolls around.