$699.
To put that in perspective, for as much as it would cost to go to that single gridiron contest on September 9th, you could get a season ticket plan to nearly any other college football team in the country. In fact, most games doesn't even offer a ticket at the high-end that costs as much as the minimum number needed to get scalp your way in for The Zombie Formerly Known as JoePa against the Robot Genius.
Reasoning for this? Well, for starters, it is the home opener of a team that will be ranked very highly in the preseason for the first time in a long time, wielding a quarterback who's all over the college football preview magazines for his Heisman potential. That would be enough to jack the tickets up even if we had a typical home opener against a team like Akron or Nevada or something. (Seriously, like Notre Dame would ever be caught dead opening their season against Nevada. Oh.) But not only is the Irish team returning to Glory totally for real this season, but they're going against another marquee team of the NCAA that was down on its luck until an 11-1 run last season. Plus, you have to take into account the fact that there are a lot of Penn State students. Rob told me he has read that they were shipping busloads of drunken fratboys and slightly-slow sorority chicks out without tickets, in hopes they could receive the golden pass to enter our hallowed Stadium. Two Rabid Fanbases + Two Seemingly Rising Programs + Home Opener apparently equals $699.
To put that into perspective, here's the minimum price to get into a lot of other marquee games this college football season:
South Carolina at Florida, in the return of Spurrier: $471
Ohio State at Texas: $395
Red River Shootout (OU/Texas): $324
Michigan at Ohio State: $345
Notre Dame at USC: $151
The Iron Bowl (Alabama at Auburn): $323
Michigan at Notre Dame: $399
StubHub has definitely turned into one of my favorite places to peruse when bored on the Information Super Highway. Of course, all of the above prices could have easily changed by the time you click on them, but those were the list prices as of 9:00 on the evening of July 16th.
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Also on the "Holy F%$#, That's A Lot Of Money" train of thought, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is absolutely murdering at the box office. It has the third highest second weekend gross of all-time (no small feat with the way studios mass-market in an attempt to make a killing on opening weekend) and the highest 10-day total of all-time, annihlating Revenge of the Sith, Shrek 2 and the Spidermans. The battle between Pirates 3 and Spiderman 3, not to mention the fifth installment of Harry Potter, next summer is going to be epic.
(My problem with box office records: Why don't they just keep track of number of tickets sold? I understand it's not as fun for the movie studios to say "We sold seven million tickets" this weekend as opposed to "We cleared 68 million dollars", but wouldn't it make it easier to keep track of which movies really were most successful? BoxOfficeMojo has a chart adjusted to inflation, and if you go by that, none of the "record-breaking" movies are even close to movies like Gone With The Wind, Star Wars, ET and The Sound of Music. As powerful as Jack Sparrow seems, he has nothing on the drawing abilities of Captain von Trapp.)
And all of that from a movie best described by Avants: "I walked out of it saying it sucked, but I totally loved it and would go back and see it again."
That, my friends, is the sign of a great summer movie.
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How can we talk about wasting money without referencing The Hills, one of the most consistently shiny displays of excess on television. If you haven't seen the latest episode from last Wednesday, allow me to assure you that it contains a higher level of unintentional comedy and ridiculous drama than the last few had. Although it was weird to see Christmas and New Years celebrated in mid-July, it was even more ridiculous how the episode ended. The ever-hilarious TVGasm has it covered.
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Although he probably didn't get a lot of money, Chris Quinn has been told to report to the Miami Heat for conditioning on July 23rd, receiving a free agent contract along with Mountaineer Mike Gansey. Kevin Pitsnoggle has already moved on to the Mavericks, and I can't really find anything on Torin Francis, though we can all hope to see him getting to triple-pump fake on the same court as Chris Thomas over in Europe somewhere.
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And how can we address the subject of money without talking about Ivy League schools? This is an old piece by Malcolm Gladwell about the application process to some of American's fancier schools that I stumbled onto over the weekend. It's lengthy, but if you've read anything else by Gladwell, you know that you couldn't find a better way to spend your reading time.
Another weekend comes to a close as summer rapidly moves forward. Around a month left until the return to campus. Good Lord, how time has flown.
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