That Sponsor: TicketIQ of course. We like them because they’re the ticket site that doesn’t hide the fees. The online sites with official connections to the schools all have about the same inventory and prices, so if you go that route go with the one who gives us money and isn’t trying to hide the fact that they make some until you’re about to buy.

The Board: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

Game	Get-In	Was	OK Pair	Was	Good	Was	6+	Was
OSU	$276	$284	$317	$378	$597	$435	$578	$505
B1G CG	$109	$85	$145	$120	$365	$187	$134	$85
MBB vs UNC	$61	$50	$95	$75	$207	$85	$62	$50

I added the UNC game because those started jumping up, but with Michigan basketball you can usually find good seats close to gametime. Unsurprisingly The Game is the biggest ticket in the world this weekend.

Cheapest tickets by section as of 4pm Tuesday:

• D Deck $365
• C Deck $296
• Club $1,338
• B Deck $402
• A Deck $271 (1 ticket at $271, then jumps to $421)
• AA Deck $540

A reader reported finding a few on Ebay but when I looked the ones that didn't look skeezy had been gobbled up. Craigslist has been a black hole all year.

Going to Ohio State

Tickets: Michigan fans held off for awhile but the buying spree has begun. Tickets are appearing in singles around $275 and getting snatched up immediately. I don't expect a total takeover but the market is responding much like the Northwestern game did, where Michigan fans are intent on going and waiting to snatch up seats when they get close to reasonable.

So what's your strategy here? I think you're going to have to bite the bullet on this one. Ohio Stadium has a lot of bad seats—the original design was for a 70,000-seat amphitheater, and filling in the open endzone only gets that to about 85,000. The last 20,000 seats were built the only way they could: vertically. So the bleachers go up, and then further up, and then even more up, and all the while the angle increases and the steps are more slippery. The architecture is Brutalism, the style the fascists loved for its ability to make a human feel oppressed and insignificant. It succeeds. If you're further down in the upper deck you already feel pretty high. If you're up in the 30th row you're going to be feeling the weather and getting a bit dizzy. The sidelines, as you can imagine, are better than the corners. For a $20 difference, if you can find seats further down it's best to do so.

Parking: Go garage. The secret is the parking structures on campus, if you arrive early enough. The 12th Avenue garage and the Neil Avenue Garage are by the hospital and adjacent to their version of the union. They'll fill up by 8 or so, but that should be your first target if you didn't pre-buy a spot. The 11th Avenue Garage will probably fill up next, followed by the 9th East garage. The nicest part is you get to walk past the field where Michigan's band warms up, then warm up yourself in the newly renovated "RPAC" building, a mix between a student union and IM building. And that's right next to the stadium.

If you've got time to spare, campus proper is right there—whether someone comes away thinking Columbus is a cement-and-box-store Midwest hell or "kinda nice" is directly correlated to whether or not they walked the Oval.

Are Their Fans Really That Bad? Yes. Certain areas have worse tailgaters than others and the majority of people there aren't the kind who will waste a Natty Ice by pouring it on a 70-year-old Michigan fan's head. However the percentage of those who will, and the sheer number of Ohio State fans who will be there even if they're not going to the game, means your chances are very high of encountering at least one of the kind of person everybody thinks about when you say "Ohio State fans."

Most of the time if you ignore them and travel in a group that doesn't particularly capture their notice you'll be able to slip by with just some ill-natured jabs. As much as the school and some of their better fans have tried to stamp this out, the cultural practice of getting into at least one fight with a Michigan fan remains. I've had the most problems crossing their athletic campus lots to the west of the stadium. If you wear a cape and walk around with a Zach Smith toy you will attract them. You'll also attract a few Ohio State fans who want to tell you that those other people don't represent all Buckeyes. They won't say so to those other people though.

This is another reason to try to stick closer to campus: campus police are visible.

[After THE JUMP: Indy, if you dare]

The Big Ten Championship Game

Hello Northwestern fans. I don't know why you're reading a Michigan blog but I've got some information for you on the Big Ten Championship Game against Ohio State or some other team.

Being a Northwestern fan, I already got my ticket a few weeks ago through that "ShooWin" company by betting on the Wildcats when it seemed they were at best 40% to go. ShooWin isn't normally a good bet—their whole thing is to guess where the secondary market will be the week before the game and price based on likelihood. Bet on Northwestern early in the season and you're paying close to face; bet on Ohio State this week and you're paying more than twice that.

As for those already sold, your best bet would probably be to befriend some nice Ohio State fans who bought theirs earlier this year and want to sell for face value. As you can see from the board, the markup isn't too bad. There will be a flurry of activity after The Game but given the confidence levels of the two fanbases I think it will be less flurry than, say, in 2016.

I'd target  $140 to $160 per ticket and look to get seats closer to the middle, based on Colts fans remarks about seats. A good way to tell how good the seats are in different parts of an NFL stadium is to find photos of their preseason games. For this one the upper endzone looks particularly uninhabited.

The bigger issue is going to be finding a place to sleep. Hotels are already insane, and from my Michigan State people, they absolutely will overbook expecting to get cancellations from the other team.

I booked an AirBnB jut out of town, and those are going for about $400/night for a mid-sized group (the VRBOs were all pricier due to higher cleaning fees). There are still plenty of hotels up the road if you don't mind getting the first half hour or so of your drive home done after the game. Downtown is tight—most sold out long ago or are offering ludicrous pricing. Fishers is the suburb on your way home, but Pendleton, Anderson, Middletwon, Daleville, and Muncie are all within an hour.