Platinum tickets for the upcoming January 28th tilt between the Maple Leafs and Canadiens will cost you $700 for a pair. If you’re interested in watching the game on your feet you can shell out $175 for a couple of standing-room-only ducats.

You’re watching the same game, only you’re standing. Is that worth $535 to you?

The stupidity of stadium ticketing sort of came to me in the form of a Barry Sanders jersey. That’s what I was looking at when the woman sitting in front of me at the Lions-Packers game a few years back decided to stand up and cheer the coin toss. She didn’t sit down again. Ever. She stood until she and her husband loaded up their Lions tote bag and headed to the parking lot. Two-hundred and forty bucks is what it cost to stand up and watch a football game.

But if you think that’s bad, check out what it would have cost you to stand at the Rose Bowl for the Texas-USC game. SRO (Standing Room Only) tickets would have run you around $300 USD for the privilege of entering the stadium.

You can sit at hockey games, you can sit at basketball games, and you can sit at baseball games. Why is it that no one in the history of the NFL has ever sat down in their assigned seat? Is everything about the game just so exciting that you can’t risk sitting down? What amazed me about the Rose Bowl is that you got back from commercial and people were still on their feet. What were they doing during the interval?

I guess that’s how you can tell which NFL franchises are in trouble. I tuned into a Lions game this year and there were actually a lot of people in their seats. Detroit’s a bad team, so why stand? Then you’ve got Indianapolis. They’re great, so naturally there isn’t a warm seat in the house.

Is atmosphere worth a thousand bucks? Ask the Giants’ fans who paid big money for endzone seats on Wildcard Sunday.