This year’s BCS Championship tickets for the game between the Auburn Tigers and Oregon Ducks has created a perfect storm of high ticket demand and pricing. With an initial price point of $600 to $700 on the open market, BCS Championship Game tickets have quickly skyrocketed to upwards of $4,000, and could end up going as high as $7,000, or even $10,000, by the time the Oregon Ducks and Auburn Tigers kick off on January 10. In effect, what Ducks and Tigers fans are experiencing are a classic short squeeze of limited supply and unprecedented demand, the most the ticketing (especially sports ticketing) market has seen in quite some time.  To be clear these are not fans buying at these prices.  These are businesses (brokers, tour operators) that sold packages when the prices were low.  They are contractually delivered to have tickets and will be forced pay the going rate or be sued.

There are many reasons why this is. First and foremost, the game features two teams with passionate fan bases who are both very hungry for a championship this season. The Oregon Ducks have never won a national championship, though they finished the 2001 season ranked second in both the AP and coaches polls. On the other side, the Auburn Tigers only have only claimed one championship title, won over 50 years ago back in 1957. By contrast, last year’s BCS Championship Game, featuring the Alabama Crimson Tide and Texas Longhorns, hosted teams that had last won in 2009 and 2005, respectively. Also, the Auburn Tigers are led by Cam Newton, who has gotten a lot of publicity for both his Heisman Trophy win and the controversy surrounding the circumstances of his arrival at Auburn. The Oregon Ducks are no slouches in the star power department with Heisman Trophy finalist LaMichael James. Finally, the game is expected to be very close, with the Auburn Tigers being a three-point favorite over the Oregon Ducks, according to Bodog. By contrast, last year, the Crimson Tide was a four-to-five-point favorite over the Longhorns, with two teams that didn’t play as exciting a brand of ball as both the Auburn Tigers and Oregon Ducks do.

In addition to the intrigue of the game itself, the BCS Championship Game venue this year is not as large as last year’s. Of all the rotating BCS Championship Game sites, the capacity of Glendale’s University of Phoenix Stadium is much smaller (73,000) than the Rose Bowl (92,542), a little smaller than the Orange Bowl (74,476), and approximately the same capacity as the Louisiana Superdome/Sugar Bowl (72,968). While seat allotments are made accordingly in proportion to capacity, a smaller stadium capacity is bound to lower ticket supply. There’s no way around it.

Ducks and Tigers fans still looking to score on the secondary market will want to avoid a situation like the Wisconsin Badgers fans did when they came out to Pasadena for the 1994 Rose Bowl. Longtime professionals in the secondhand ticket market and college football fans still remember the pre-BCS Championship Game fiasco when 10,000 Badgers fans came all the way out to the west coast on New Year’s Day only to find out that their tickets were no good and wouldn’t get them into the Rose Bowl. Auburn Tigers and Oregon Ducks fans won’t want to repeat that mistake.

Even though the secondary ticket market and its safeguards have changed very much for the better since 1994, BCS and Fiesta Bowl officials are still wary of having ticket buyers duped by malicious scalpers who are looking to take illegal advantage of this historic BCS Championship Game market. According to an ABC 15 report in Phoenix, Arizona, local Glendale police will be on the lookout for possible scalped fakes to the BCS Championship Game, especially those that might be sold to the estimated 10,000 who will look for tickets locally before Oregon and Auburn play. “We will have a contingent of officers looking for fraudulent tickets,” said Sgt. Brent Coombs. “But as always, buyer beware.” That same report also says that BCS Championship Game tickets come with secret security features that will prevent counterfeits from being used at the game. Buyers can tell if their tickets are fake or not through a bar code and raised lettering. Also, some tickets will show a BCS Championship Game logo if black light is applied to them.

If you’re one of those fans willing to put down a small car down payment on a BCS Championship Game ticket—or just that die-hard a fan of the Auburn Tigers or Oregon Ducks—take to heart the example of those Wisconsin Badgers fans in 1994 and make sure that you buy the hottest ticket in recent memory from a reliable source. You don’t want to plunk down a few grand just for the pleasure of watching the game on a television somewhere in Glendale or Phoenix because you were fooled by a well-crafted fake. Hey, if you do end up with a bogus tickets, come back to the Zigabid blog, where we will later go more in depth as to how to avoid getting burned in the future by fraudulent tickets before you buy.