Looking to see Appalachian State host its first-ever Power 5 conference foe this weekend? Better get ready to shell out some serious cash.

As the High County Press reported, tickets for Appalachian State’s game against Miami are going for as much as $749 on resale sites after the game sold out almost immediately after tickets went on sale this summer.

For the Mountaineers, Miami’s visit is a boon. Just two weeks after App State nearly upended Tennessee on the road, the Hurricanes’ trip to Boone, North Carolina, provides some legitimacy for a program that has only been playing at the FBS level for two years. For Miami, however, the trip is, well, not ideal.

"This is a really good football team, and everybody knows it," Miami coach Mark Richt said of Appalachian State. Richard C. Lewis/Icon Sportswire

“It’s the crazy world of scheduling,” Miami athletics director Blake James said. “We were in a situation where we thought we had a school coming here for a home game, and that fell apart at the last minute. Appalachian State was interested in doing a home-and-home, and we felt it was a fit for us.”

James said Miami is “looking forward” to the trip, but as the Mountaineers’ date with Tennessee -- an overtime loss against the then-No. 9 team in the country -- offered a reminder that this might not be as straightforward a matchup as the names on the front of the jerseys would suggest.

The highlight of App State’s existence as a football program is a win in the Big House over Michigan in 2007, a victory that has long held as one of the most iconic David-over-Goliath games in college football history. But the program was a longtime FCS powerhouse, and going toe-to-toe with Tennessee only reinforced that Miami isn’t going to waltz into Boone expecting an easy win.

“How could anybody that knows football take this team lightly?” Miami coach Mark Richt said. “We don’t even have to say that to our guys. They’ve seen the film, they watched them against Tennessee. They know. This is a really good football team, and everybody knows it.”

What Miami doesn’t know is just what to expect from the environment.

What was set up as schedule filler for the Hurricanes is the biggest event in recent history in Boone. The stadium will be packed, the fans rabid, and the atmosphere hostile to the big-name outsiders.

It’s an odd dynamic that even Richt admits is foreign to him despite his 15 years as a head coach at Georgia. He said he’d seen a few lower-level games when his son, Jon, was playing at Mars Hill, but he’d never brought his own team to a venue like this.

“It’s certainly going to be an experience for our guys,” Richt said.

In the past five years, there have been 23 games between ACC teams and Group of 5 opponents played on the smaller team’s field. Miami has made trips to FAU (a school just down the road in South Florida) and Cincinnati (one of the more prominent Group of 5 schools). The results have been less than stellar for the ACC, which is just 16-7 in such games. They’re 43-15 in similar games played at home or on a neutral field (with three of those losses coming against nationally ranked Group of 5 schools).

While it’s hardly an easy win for Miami, it will serve as a relatively high-profile game -- even if James couldn’t have immediately anticipated that when it was scheduled. James said he’s on the fence about the ACC’s potential move to a nine-game conference slate, but he said he’s definitely open to scheduling more home-and-homes with smaller schools if the fit is right.

“I never rule anything out in scheduling,” James said. “There’s a lot of challenges, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re always looking for games that are good for our program, and this is a good game for our program.”