By car, the journey from Clemson's Death Valley to Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, is 2,564 miles and 39 hours.

If you want to drive and make it in time to see Clemson and Alabama face off on Monday, you need to leave late Saturday night. Friday if you want some time for rest stops and sleep.

Given the distance, getting to the national championship game means taking a plane for most fans.

Three airlines added direct flights from Greenville to San Jose on Sunday, but those tickets came at a steep price. American Airlines' round-trip flight was running for $1,436, according to the airline's website. Delta's direct flight from Greenville came in at $2,112 round trip.

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Fans who want to attend the game Jan. 7 without paying thousands are getting creative with routes to the stadium.

Seth Lauderdale found out around 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve that he got a free ticket to the game for the Taco Bell Live Más Student Section.

Lauderdale had just returned from the Cotton Bowl with his sister. If he had known about the ticket for the national championship, he said he would have tried flying straight from Dallas.

Instead, Lauderdale, a graduate architecture student, found $700 round-trip tickets from Atlanta to Sacramento. From Sacramento, he is taking a trip on Megabus to reach San Francisco and meet a friend, who he can stay with. The ride costs $5 and takes an hour and 50 minutes.

"I don't know how we will get from downtown San Francisco to Santa Clara, but I will be there for sure," said Lauderdale. "We’ll take an Uber if we have to."

Lauderdale has never been to California before and it will be his first time watching Clemson play in the title game.

To come home, Lauderdale will take a red-eye flight from Sacramento with a connection in Seattle. He is set to land in Atlanta at 6:30 a.m. Jan. 9.

"Then, I'll drive to class," said Lauderdale, who is using money from summer work for the trip.

Other fans have found cheap tickets through Las Vegas, a nine-hour drive to Santa Clara; Reno, a five-hour drive; and Los Angeles, a five and a half hour drive.

Round-trip tickets from Atlanta to Las Vegas for Jan. 6 to Jan. 8 were running for under $300 as of Wednesday.

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Brent Rippy did not set a price limit for getting to the game, but the Atlanta fifth-grade teacher tried to be savvy with his planning. He and his wife have been to every home game for the last eight to 10 years, and they try to travel to bowls and ACC championship games.

When Rippy returned from the championship game in 2017, the substitute teacher filling in for him had taught his students the cadence count. They started chanting it when he walked back in the classroom from his trip. For the 2016 Fiesta Bowl, the couple found a cheap route through Las Vegas.

This time around, he found flights to Los Angeles on Delta and booked a connection from there to San Jose for $49 per person each way on Southwest.

They are leaving enough of a layover in Los Angeles to stop by Disneyland. The adventure will take them full circle. When they drove to Tampa in 2017, they dropped by Walt Disney World.

"We just try to find the best deal we can and always try to work in something fun," Rippy said.

Traveling through Atlanta, they see plenty of other Clemson fans. When they traveled to the Texas A&M game, he said the whole plane was wearing orange.

Rippy's advice to other travelers is to shop around other regional airports to see what may be cheapest — and to book early.

He booked his trip to California as soon as Clemson won the ACC title game.

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