Vols takeover? Tennessee residents buy 42% of resold Ohio State game tickets

We could see a lot more Tennessee orange when the Vols visit Ohio State in the first round of the College Football Playoff, based on what we know from the ticket markets.

Tennessee fans could make up much more of the Ohio State game than the Buckeyes would prefer, based on ticket resale figures. / Saul Young/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

We could see a lot of Tennessee orange in the stands at Ohio Stadium when Ohio State hosts the Volunteers in the first round of the College Football Playoff this weekend, and it could cut into the Buckeyes’ home field advantage.

The leak of a presale code has allowed Tennessee football fans to get a head start on buying tickets for that game, and sales in the secondary market haven’t slowed down, either.

An astonishing 42 percent of all game tickets that have been resold on SeatGeek have gone to residents of the state of Tennessee, according to Awful Announcing.

Of those resold tickets, just 23 percent have gone to people living in Ohio.

Looking over at StubHub, about 37 percent of tickets have gone to Tennesseans, while 34 percent of them have been sold to Ohioans.

Tennessee was given an allotment of 3,500 tickets, the number mandated by the College Football Playoff as the visitor in the game, around 3 percent of the 102,870-seat capacity at Ohio Stadium.

But with how many tickets appear to be getting resold to people in the Volunteer State, the Buckeyes could be playing in front of a more critical crowd despite being in their own stadium.

Awful Announcing estimated that Tennessee fans could end up comprising up to 22 percent of the Ohio Stadium crowd, more than the usual 5 to 12 percent that visitors usually occupy.

That, combined with students being on Christmas break, could result in Ohio State losing another key component of its perceived home-field edge.

The situation even aroused the concern of Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork, who went on local radio in Columbus recently to plead with fans not to sell their tickets to the other side.

“Don’t sell your tickets,” Bjork said on 97.1 FM in Columbus.

“Tennessee fans, they’re rabid fans. They are going to invade the Shoe. Let’s make sure we don’t have as much orange in there as people think.”

For his part, Vols coach Josh Heupel said he wasn’t surprised to learn so many Tennessee fans were looking to buy tickets for the away game.

“Not with this fan base,” he said. “It’s a nice short drive up there. Christmas is right around the corner. It’s a great Christmas present.”

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