MIAMI — Ticket prices for Monday night’s College Football Playoff national championship game between the top-ranked, top-seeded Indiana Hoosiers (15-0) and the No. 10 Miami Hurricanes (13-2) have dropped only slightly from their peak, with supply obviously low and demand obviously high.
Ticketdata, which tracks resale pricing of tickets across major marketplaces, said the lowest get-in price for the game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens was $3,652 at midday Sunday. That number — based on a two-ticket purchase, including fees — was down about 8% from where it was at midday Saturday.
Many sites still showed some tickets topping $10,000 apiece in the best sections of the lower bowl of the stadium where the Hurricanes and the NFL’s Miami Dolphins play their home games. Some parking passes — no game ticket included — were topping $1,000 online, though a few could be found in remote lots for as little as $100 or so.
Last week, CFP executive director Rich Clark was asked about how ticket prices at Hard Rock Stadium for the game were topping the secondary market costs for pop star Taylor Swift shows at the same stadium during her recent world tour.
“It’s more expensive than Taylor Swift? We have arrived,” Clark said, smiling — and it should be noted that the CFP has nothing to do with setting the secondary market costs. “That’s awesome. I will just say that speaks to the excitement of the game.”
Miami went through its allotment with ease, as would be expected. Season ticket partners for the Hurricanes were all sent emails in recent weeks asking them to stake their claims for tickets to each round of the 12-team CFP, and those who responded to those pitches had the best luck in getting their hands on the hottest ticket in college football.
Indiana fans have traveled in droves to their team’s CFP games — the Rose Bowl quarterfinal and Peach Bowl semifinal followed a first-round bye — and it’s clear that the Hoosiers have come to Miami as well.
“I know they’ll travel well to this game,” Indiana linebacker Isaiah Jones said. “I think it’s going to be a statement that it’s in Miami, and I think we’ll still see a very decent amount of Indiana Hoosiers fans.”
Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a Miami native who spent his first three years of college at California before transferring ahead of this season, can attest to that.
“Tickets are definitely a problem,” the Heisman Trophy winner said, “because there’s so many family members that want to come to the game.”
Waiting for XL
Miami will be without defensive back Xavier Lucas for the first half of Monday’s game because he was flagged for targeting in the second half of the team’s Fiesta Bowl semifinal win against No. 6 Ole Miss earlier this month.
The Hurricanes tried, to no avail, to get the play revisited.
Players flagged for targeting in the first half of a game have to simply sit out the remainder of that contest. Those flagged in the second half are out for the remainder of that game and must sit the first half of the ensuing game as well.
So in the final news conference for both teams before the title matchup, Miami coach Mario Cristobal said he hopes the rule gets amended going forward.
“We feel it was unjustly administered, and now it impacts the last game of the season,” Cristobal said Sunday. “We do have the ability, again, as an officiating crew and the powers that be to revisit that to give every team due process and their best ability to compete in this game.”
Lucas was ejected in the fourth quarter. Miami was upset that a targeting call earlier in the game against Ole Miss was overturned after review, saying it felt the plays were extremely similar.
National TV taking notice
CFP title game buz made it to NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and CBS’s “Sunday Morning” this weekend.
“SNL” took a comedic look at former Hurricanes receiver Michael Irvin’s impassioned antics on the sideline during the playoff run, with Kam Patterson portraying the enthusiastic alum for a segment on “Weekend Update.” The bit showed a photo of Irvin screaming toward Miami coach Mario Cristobal; Patterson, as Irvin, said, “Here’s me whispering.”
Fortunately for Cristobal, a former offensive lineman for the Hurricanes, the bit didn’t include Irvin’s now-infamous smooch of the Miami coach’s cheek after one of the CFP wins.
“I’d rather not get kissed by Michael Irvin. … That whole kiss thing, I’m never going to live that down,” Cristobal said, adding that he considers Irvin a brother and has been thrilled to have him on the sideline.
On “Sunday Morning,” host Jane Pauley — a proud Indiana graduate — discussed the school’s rise from perennial football doormat status to becoming a juggernaut, even drawing parallels to the high school basketball movie “Hoosiers” and that championship tale. She lauded an “unexcitable” coach in Curt Cignetti, along with “disciplined training and a lot of money to back it up” as part of the reasons why Indiana got to the title game.
And, of course, she pointed out Mendoza and his rise to Indiana royalty.
“A Florida boy,” Pauley said. “A Hoosier now.”