Football tickets are expensive. There’s no way around that and it’s been that way forever. But at what point does “expensive” turn into “ridiculous”? The NFL and NCAA might be the two biggest names in American sports, but they sure aren’t being shy about it with their astronomical food and ticket prices.

According to yahoo.com, the average cost to take a family of four to an NFL game, with tickets, food, drinks, parking, the whole ten yards, was $443.93.The Dallas Cowboys were the highest; a day with the family coming in at $634.78; not to mention if you decide to tailgate before the game, which is un-American if you don’t.

I did some research on ticket prices around the two sports leagues and I couldn’t believe how high the prices actually were.

I’ll start with the NCAA. According to forbes.com the average ticket price to the Alabama-Texas A&M game was $700. The AVERAGE ticket price was $700, opposed to having some friends over and watching it on your big screen TV and watching Johnny Football go down for FREE.

Now it would make sense that the more seats you can fill, the cheaper you would make your tickets, right? But vven the largest football stadium in all of North America, Michigan Stadium, aka ‘The Big House’, has an average ticket price of $230, trailing only Notre Dame ($294) and Ohio State ($246 for the largest stadium in the state of Ohio).

Those in the Queen City who are looking for a more reasonably priced football experience should head over to Clifton and check out the UC Bearcats. They still have four home games remaining on their BCS Championship year schedule, and while you’ll still have to pay a little bit, it’s a lot better in comparison to what Mike Brown and his boys are charging. You can get two Bearcats tickets along with food and drinks for the price of one Bengals ticket ALONE. But even if the Bearcats break the bank, I’m pretty sure the Ohio Bobcats have something WAAYY in the back.

Now when you think of football, you should think of the NFL, and when you think of the NFL, you should think expensive. Team owners don’t seem to care about the decreasing attendance numbers and it’s not even the biggest games of the year that will kill your wallet.

The Chicago Bears, who don’t look like they will make any noise yet again this year, have an average ticket price of $282.16 according to 247wallst.com, and they haven’t even won a Super Bowl since Ditka. This is probably because that while Soldier Field is historic and the oldest NFL stadium still in use, it is also the second stadium with a capacity of 61,500, topped only by the 53,200 of the Oakland Raiders O.co Coliseum.

Even the lousy 2012-2013 New York Jets had the highest average ticket price in the whole league. But really a Jets game is more like a magic show that a football game; you pick a card and whoever is on that card will be the starting quarterback that day.  If all of the high prices weren’t already enough, the NFL isn’t helping their cause with the new bag and purse policy, which I find really stupid and believe will only continue to drive fans away from the stadiums.

The rule states that all bags must be clear plastic and cannot exceed 12” x 6”. If that is the case, let’s hope that enough fans are driven away so that the NFL and NCAA owners will make some price changes, so that we can stay away from Bobcats games.

But, really, who cares, because we have the greatest football team and stadium right in our backyard. Let’s just hope that the field house ticket office doesn’t get any new price ideas.