The death of college football's common fan

I’ve been going to University of Tennessee football games since I was a kid. I’ve been inside the hallowed confines of Neyland Stadium many, many times while also following the Vols on the road to various SEC and bowl venues.

This season I’ve come to terms with the fact that my days of game attendance may be through. It simply isn’t affordable any longer.

I’ve griped for several years about the cost of attending a game. It isn’t just the tickets, but the extras that gnaw at your wallet. Parking can range from $20 to $40 (or more if you want to park on campus). Concessions are highway robbery … and don’t even try to say that concessions are a choice. Sitting through 3.5 hours of September heat and humidity in the South without a bottle of water isn’t an option.

Add it all up, and it’s easily hundreds of dollars for a family of four to attend a single college football game. That’s more than most families can afford. I’ve always worked side gigs to attend at least a couple of games per year. But at some point the insanity has to stop.

It is to be expected that marquee games — which includes most conference games — are going to be an expensive ticket. Traditionally, though, games against weaker opponents were opportunities for folks who couldn’t afford the bigger games to see their teams play. Season ticket holders typically offload their tickets to less-desirable games to recoup some of the cost. It was then that you’d see fathers taking their young sons to their first games, taking advantage of below-face-value tickets.

With the skyrocketing cost of tickets across the college football landscape, compounded with Tennessee’s return to national contender status, those opportunities are drying up. Even tickets to games against weaker opponents are now in high demand.

Of course Tennessee’s nearly decade-and-a-half of wandering through the college football wilderness put a dent in ticket prices. There were times when it wasn’t impossible to grab tickets to non-conference games for under $20. When the Vols were at their worst, folks were literally giving tickets away.

But even before the Vols’ drop-off in the mid 2000s, tickets weren’t terribly unreasonable. I attended several of the home games during the 1998 national championship season when I was a college kid working as a bag-boy at a grocery store. The games I attended didn’t include Florida or Alabama — the biggest draws on the home schedule that year — but I recall making a last-minute decision to attend a late-season game against UAB and grabbing a ticket from a scalper on the street for $5. That’s right: a lower-level, sideline ticket to watch the nation’s top-ranked team play for just $5. If I remember correctly, face value of a game ticket in those days was about $45.

My neighbor called me a few weeks ago to tell me to keep an eye out for tickets to Tennessee’s game against South Carolina, the first SEC home game of the season. “No way,” I told him. “I’m not paying $500 for a pair of tickets to a football game.”

My son wanted me to look for tickets to Tennessee’s game against Georgia. “No way,” I told him. “I’m not paying $800 for a pair of tickets to a football game.”

If Tennessee beats Florida in Gainesville later this month, those prices will increase. The current get-in-the-door price is $250 for a single ticket to the South Carolina game, and $400 for a single ticket to the Georgia game.

Since I am unwilling to pay what it will take to see the Vols take on an SEC opponent, I thought I might grab tickets to the home opener against Austin Peay. Those games aren’t much fun; glorified scrimmages, basically. But it would be a good opportunity to take the whole family to enjoy the pageantry of a college football Saturday in the South. Right?

Except the price for a ticket to see the Vols take on the Governors is currently about $70 for upper level south end zone tickets (which are the least desirable seats in the house). I’m doing the math in my head… six tickets is $420. Parking is $40. Six bottles of water and six hot dogs at the concession stand is $60.

Not including gas, that’s $520 for a family trip to see Tennessee play a game that it should win by least 50 points. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who are better off financially than I am who wouldn’t bat an eye at laying down five hundred bucks for a college football Saturday, even one featuring a less-than-marquee matchup. But I’m not sure it’s sound financial advice for anyone to do so. And I know it isn’t sound financial advice for someone whose bank account looks like mine to do so.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. Sure, a big part of it is because Tennessee is currently competing well and fans are excited. By contrast, you can get a ticket to Florida’s game against McNeese State Saturday for less than $20. Even tickets to Alabama’s game against Texas — hyped up by ESPN and others as college football’s biggest game this weekend — are around $130, which is about half of what it will take to see Tennessee face South Carolina (hardly one of the SEC’s big dogs) in a couple of weeks.

But college football in general is pricing out the common fan. How could it not? The game has become an arms race. It started with the millions of dollars it takes to lure in and retain the game’s most sought after coaches. The 25 highest-paid coaches in America all make more than $5 million a year, and most are closer to $10 million. (Alabama’s Nick Saban, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Georgia’s Kirby Smart each make more than $10 million.) In 1998, the year I paid $5 to watch Tennessee beat UAB on its way to a national championship, the average NCAA head coach made $417,000. That year, college football’s only million-dollar man was Florida’s Steve Spurrier, who had just been given a pay raise that put him at about $2 million annually. As recently as 2008, the SEC’s highest-paid head coach (LSU’s Les Miles) made less than $4 million.

It's not just the head coaches making a lot of money these days. LSU gave former defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (now the head coach at Baylor) $2.5 million, and many Power 5 teams are now spending at least as much money for their pool of assistants as they are for their head coach.

The second part of the arms race is facility improvements. In a landscape where everyone is trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Sabans, as it may be), it’s not just the stadium that has to be sparkling. Practice facilities, weight rooms, everything has to be state-of-the-art. Tennessee recently spent more than a quarter of a billion — yes, billion, with a “B” — on renovations to Neyland Stadium.

So when you see a $79.00 face value price on a ticket to see Tennessee play Austin Peay and wonder why, there’s your answer. Someone has to pay for all of these salaries and improvements. That someone is the fan.

I still love college football. That’s subject to change as conference realignment, NIL deals and the transfer portal all combine to push the college game in the direction of the NFL. But, for now, the tradition, passion and pageantry of a college football Saturday is unparalleled in sports. I’ve never been one of those people who say, “I don’t like crowds and I’d rather watch the game on my HD big screen at home.” I love the energy of being inside a stadium for a big game, something my TV and the comforts of home cannot replicate.

Everyone has a limit, though. Barring something unforeseen, 2023 will mark the first season since 1996 that I have not attended a single game at Neyland Stadium. The costs simply cannot be justified anymore.

Photo by Angela Loria on Unsplash