Want to watch Georgia take on the Fighting Irish? It won’t be cheap.

Want to join your fellow ‘Dawgs invading South Bend on September 9th for the Georgia/Notre Dame game? It’s going to cost you. Relatively few tickets are up for sale on third party vendor StubHub.com. And the cheapest ticket still available (a single located in the lower level behind one end zone) is going for $694.52, plus applicable fees and taxes. Want to have another Bulldog fan sit with you so you don’t feel weird about actually standing up and cheering at a football game at the home of “Sit Down Jesus?” Your best option is a pair of seats in the upper level endzone going for $728.28 apiece.

By comparison, tickets for Alabama’s game with Florida State (neither of whom, you should remember, went 4-8 in 2016) are going for a comparable $704.14. If you want to snap up tickets to November’s Iron Bowl in Auburn, you can do so for the relatively reasonable sum of $227.00. Want to catch Ohio State taking on Michigan in the big game in Ann Arbor? That’ll only cost you $234.60, and you can sit darn near in Jim Harbaugh’s lap for only 50 bucks more than you’ll pay to walk in the gate in South Bend.

What can we take from these numbers? One possible lesson is that for all the bellyaching fans in Big Ten country do about SEC teams “never leaving the South” (a long-exposed fallacy, but they spend nine months a year in a knock-off Hoth and may not even know what a sundress is, so let’s give ‘em that one), they are pretty curious to see what happens when we do. Another possibility is that the combination of a historically significant opponent in a hallowed college football locale is driving UGA fans to see if Delta flies into South Bend.*

No matter the cause, the high ticket prices seem to me consonant with a big, intersectional game that should draw eyeballs from around the country. Make no mistake, Kirby Smart’s team will be on the big stage with a lot of recruits, media members, and fans from around the nation looking to see whether they can make a year two leap forward. And the good news is those fans from around the country may take a break from rooting against the SEC team to root against the team fans from other conferences detest on principle even more. So we got that going for us. Which is nice. Until later . . .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!

*In fact they do and you can currently get a direct roundtrip ticket leaving Atlanta on Wednesday, September 6th and returning on Sunday the 9th for a reasonable $275. Just so you know.