Plenty of BCS tickets still available

Heading into the weekend before Monday’s highly anticipated BCS national championship game, there are still about 860 tickets available on Stubhub.com and about the same available through Ticketmaster’s resale site. The cheapest single seat is listed at around $970—down about $100 from a week ago—but most tickets still start around the $1,250 mark and go up considerably from there. For Tigers fans thinking of heading to New Orleans Monday in search of a ticket on the street, the BCS recommends you don’t buy them from strangers if you want to avoid the risk of buying a fake. “We haven’t had any reports of fake tickets at this point. But, of course, you don’t hear about it until game day,” says BCS spokesman John Sudsbury. “We’re hoping it doesn’t become an issue, but there’s always a good chance of it happening when you have tickets of that value.” Last year, authorities seized about 200 fake tickets to the championship game between Auburn and Oregon in Phoenix, and a number of people were arrested. Sudsbury says if you’re going to buy a ticket from the secondary market, make sure it’s from a resale website that guarantees you’re getting an authentic BCS ticket. He says you should also familiarize yourself with the tickets and their authentication indicators—such as the hologram—before you buy. Check out this thread on Tigerdroppings.com to see photos of tickets and hear how other Tigers fans are differentiating real tickets from the fakes. —Steve Sanoski