Complaints about college being unaffordable are all too common these days, and even something as simple as supporting the football team in person has become too much for some students to afford, especially for schools with competitive Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams.
School spirit doesn't come cheap, as the average ticket for a Power Five Conference football team comes in at $147 -- well above the $107.50 average price of an NFL ticket. Even back in 2021, the average ticket for college football games from the SEC -- a conference which includes perennial powerhouses such as Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Florida -- cost $244, with Big Ten tickets close behind at $223.
For all the talk of broke college students who can't afford life's niceties -- or even necessities -- at least some portion of the student body is finding the funds for football. Unlike certain professional sports teams that struggle to sell out tickets, or even fill a significant portion of the stadium -- looking at you, Oakland Athletics -- college football stands continue to be filled to the brim. The top 20 teams by raw average attendance over the past five years each filled their stadiums to at least 92 percent capacity in 2022, and even middling performers among the 133 FBS teams posted gaudy attendance numbers, with the likes of Rutgers and Kansas State exceeding 50,000 attendees per game. Michigan, Penn State, LSU, Ohio State, Texas, and Tennessee all averaged over 100,000 fans at their 2022 home games.
By far the biggest rise in ticket prices for 2023 has come at Colorado University, where the arrival of coach Deion "Prime Time" Sanders to the previously struggling program has sparked a 285 percent increase in average ticket prices, from $73 to $281, according to ticket marketplace Vivid Seats. Average ticket prices for Colorado's home games peaked at a whopping $517 on the secondary ticket market. With this massive increase, Colorado leapfrogged Ohio State ($512) for the priciest ticket in college football. Tennessee ($492), Notre Dame ($481) and Alabama ($470) round out the top five, and even 25th-priciest Oregon still costs an average of $220 to attend a home game.
In fairness, fans attending Colorado games in 2023 are also paying for a far superior product compared to previous years, in addition to the star power of Sanders, who is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame for his contributions as a player. Coach Sanders was followed to Colorado by numerous key on-field contributors, led by Coach Prime's son Shedeur Sanders, whose 1,410 passing yards are the second most in FBS behind Washington's Michael Penix through four games. After going 1-11 in 2022, the Buffaloes won their first three games under coach Sanders -- including victories over last season's College Football Playoff runner-up, TCU, and in-state rival Colorado State -- before losing to perennial PAC-12 Conference powerhouses Oregon and USC. None of Colorado, Oregon nor USC will be in the PAC-12 next season, but that's a story for a different day.
The loss to Oregon hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of Colorado's fanbase. With base tuition of $6,812 per semester at Colorado for in-state students -- before accounting for room and board -- students who pay the $517 average price to attend all six of Colorado's home games in 2023 will be spending nearly half as much ($3,102) on football games as they will on college tuition.
