Danny Moloshok/Associated Press

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The players had not left the Los Angeles Coliseum after Notre Dame defeated Southern California on Nov. 24 when the Fighting Irish senior Danny Kinasz secured his seat for the plane ride to Miami for the Bowl Championship Series title game on Jan. 7.

Before the berth was officially secured, Kinasz wanted to ensure he would be a part of “a weeklong celebration of Notre Dame.”

“Within five minutes of the game ending, I booked my flight,” he said.

He does not have a ticket to the game. But he will be on that plane to Miami.

There were more than 100,000 ticket requests for the game from Irish fans, according to an article in The South Bend Tribune. There was a student lottery for 2,500 tickets from a total of 13,500 applicants — Notre Dame graduate and undergraduate students, and students from the sister school, St. Mary’s College.

The Notre Dame ticket office said 37 percent of the students in the lottery got tickets, at a discounted price of $150 each. For the 63 percent who did not, tickets can be found online starting about $1,000, with prices climbing to more than $10,000 for some seats — obviously well beyond the reach of most students, and fans.

No ticket to the game? There will be a pep rally off Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, which will be attended by the ESPN analyst and former Irish coach Lou Holtz. The Notre Dame Club of Miami will host a viewing party at Monty’s Bar on South Beach. So, even if the price of a ticket on StubHub is too steep, nearly 8,000 Notre Dame undergrads will be undeterred and are likely to make the trip to South Florida, for the weather and the festivities.

Among the snow birds will be Dagny Nagengast, a senior who will be making the trip from Iowa. She has watched every game this season with the same group of friends — and whether watching at Notre Dame Stadium or on TV, they reveled in the 12-0 season.

“It still feels almost surreal,” she said. “I think at the beginning of the season, nobody expected it. Nobody saw this coming. As we went through the season, everyone had the feeling of this is going to be the week where it all ends. But it never happened. I think we’re still on that high.”

Nagengast may not be in Sun Life Stadium, but she still plans to join with her friends in singing the alma mater at the end of the game, win or lose.

“What’s most important to me is that it feels like I’m a student no matter what, because this is our last football game,” she said. “As seniors, it was important to us to go down and make it feel like it is a home game. We tailgate together, we watch the pregame together, we do it as we’ve done every other game.”

Another senior, Collin Mackett, will not have to worry about taking a plane to the game; he is from Vero Beach, Fla., which is about a two-hour drive from Miami. The only problem is he does not have a golden ticket to the game.

“It sounds like every senior that I know is going to be there,” Mackett said. “I’m sure the stadium is going to be absolutely crazy.” And he knows that “so many people are going to be watching from the outside.”

To start a season that was supposed to be a flop, about 35,000 fans traveled to Dublin for a game against Navy. It is hard to know how many students and fans will make the trip south to Florida, but with a national championship on the line, Miami may want to batten down the hatches.

“If we lose, at least I get to say I was there,” Kinasz said. “If we win, I’ll get to celebrate with the team.”

Megan Doyle is the managing editor at The Observer, the daily student newspaper serving Notre Dame and St. Mary’s. Follow here on Twitter.