Ticket angst 6 months before Big Game

From today's SF Chron:

Perhaps never in the history of the game have Old Blues suffered so much anguish half a year before kickoff.

The 115-year-old Cal-Stanford football contest transcends mere athletics. It's a gathering of the tribes, a bacchanalian ritual akin to Mardi Gras and Christmas combined. For fans of both schools, the Big Game is seared into their internal clock like the turning of the seasons.

In the past, any Cal season ticket holder automatically got a ticket to the Big Game. But that has changed -- tickets for November's showdown are expected to be rarer than Stanford victories last year. The only way for Cal fans to get Big Game tickets at this point is to have donated at least $6,800 to the athletic booster fund or to buy Stanford season tickets.

[snip]

Stanford is reserving 35,000 Big Game seats for Stanford season ticket holders, students, faculty and fans, and it gave 15,011 to Cal, the same number Stanford gives to all visiting teams.

The problem is that, typically, 40,000 to 45,000 Cal fans attend the Big Game every year, whether it's at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley or at Stanford.

And in the Two Cents column - What's the most you'd pay to see the Big Game?

• I would pay about $10, though I think I will be able to get two tickets for that price from a Stanford booster. Honestly, who would bother to go see a 12-0 Cal team beat up a 0-12 Stanford team?

  Zero -- because I'm saving everything I can to pay for Cal's Rose Bowl tix. Cal hasn't played Pasadena in January since I was born, but this is the season it happens, and a ticket will cost more than Google shares.

  I'm a die-hard Bears fan. My wife and I both went to Cal, as did our two children. Even a Cal football game won't get me to set foot on the Stanford campus.