Tickets for Notre Dame-Georgia at Sanford Stadium on Saturday are the "most expensive this season and among the five toughest tickets to acquire in college football over the last five years," according to Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com. The average ticket price sold on Vivid Seats through Sunday was $611. During the last five seasons, "four of the five most expensive tickets for college football games, excluding bowls and the College Football Playoff, involved" UGA. UGA officials said that they are "preparing for as many as 90,000 fans without tickets to be in Athens this weekend." UGA is "adding 500 seats in aluminum bleachers" at Sanford Stadium "below the scoreboard in the west end zone for Notre Dame fans, bringing Sanford's capacity to a record 93,246" (ESPN.com, 9/16).
HYPE THROUGH THE ROOF: CBS' Brad Nessler, who is calling the game on Saturday night and lives in the nearby town of Duluth, said, "I’ve lived here for four decades and I can’t remember too many times when an on-campus home game has had this much buzz, especially a night game. There’s obviously been big games, SEC games. I think the fact that it’s Notre Dame has taken on kind of a life of its own." In Athens, Marc Weiszer notes CBS "typically has one prime time game a year as part of its SEC package." It has shown Alabama-LSU since '11 in that spot, but the "first ever visit of Notre Dame to Athens is the main event of the coming weekend and one of the most anticipated nonconference games this season." Nessler said, "We’ve had this marked on the calendar since we saw it. We were like, ‘OK, this is going to be fun'" (ATHENS BANNER-HERALD, 9/17).
