Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The University of Georgia football team doesn't get out of the Southeast much.

So when the Bulldogs scheduled a game against Arizona State University in Tempe, their farthest destination in 48 years, Georgia fans jumped at the chance to go -- even if they had to buy Sun Devils season tickets to attend just one contest. Turns out they got a bargain.

``We've had this game circled since it was announced,'' Arthur Steedman, a 1999 Georgia graduate, said in a telephone interview. ``I think the people in Arizona are going to be really surprised how many Georgia fans actually come and really care about this game.''

About 15,000 fans will accompany the Dawgs, as the team is known, to Arizona for tomorrow night's game at Sun Devil Stadium, said Damon Evans, Georgia's athletic director.

This may not be an ordinary season for the Georgia team, which started with the No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press sportswriters' poll for the first time ever and won its first three games. Sophomore running back Knowshon Moreno is a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the top college player.

Bulldog fans are following a football program that dates back to 1892. Georgia was the first school to give a coaching job to Glenn ``Pop'' Warner, the pioneer who popularized the screen pass and shoulder pads and created a youth football league. Its only national championship came in 1980.

Georgia received 7,300 single-game tickets from Arizona State for the game, and 13,000 requests to buy them, Evans said. The school gave first crack to donors who earned the most points for giving to its athletic fund. The threshold for a first-time contributor to get tickets was $10,500, he said.

Shortage of Points

That left people like Steedman on the outside.

``You could have had 25,000 people requesting tickets, but there are just a lot of us who know our point totals are too low that we're just not going to get them,'' said Steedman, who lives in Athens, Georgia, where the university's main campus is.

He and about 2,000 other Georgia fans figured out that they could get into the game by buying a Sun Devils season ticket for as little as $99.

Unlike schools in the Southeastern Conference, which has produced the past two college football national champions, Arizona State rarely sells out of season tickets for its 70,706- seat stadium.

Arizona State has no problem with accepting orders from people who will cheer the opposition, said Mark Brand, a spokesman for the school's football program. In fact, it schedules games with major out-of-conference opponents to help sell tickets.

Open Invitation

``We do this on an annual basis,'' Brand said. ``That's our scheduling philosophy. If somebody wants to buy our season tickets, we're not going to turn them down.''

The Sun Devils have hosted the University of Nebraska of the Big 12 Conference, and Louisiana State University, the defending national champion and one of Georgia's top Southeastern Conference foes.

Steedman said he is among Georgia fans who donated the rest of his season tickets -- for six games against Pacific-10 Conference opponents including 17th-ranked Oregon and UCLA -- to charities in the Phoenix area.

Georgia, ranked third in the writers' poll after beating unranked South Carolina 14-7 last week, is catching the Arizona State team after its 23-20 overtime loss to unranked University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The Sun Devils were ranked 15th before the game and fell out of the top 25 afterward.

Evans, the Georgia athletic director, said tomorrow's game may bolster the Bulldogs' ranking in national polls, help spread its popularity outside the Southeast and aid recruiting.

Road Trip

For Georgia fans, the journey to Tempe is something they haven't experienced in more than four decades.

Aside from season-ending bowl games, it will be Georgia's longest road trip since 1960, when the University of Southern California beat the Bulldogs 10-3 in Los Angeles. Their last trip outside the Southeast during the season was a 1967 visit to the University of Houston.

This game's location inspired sightseeing for 1985 Georgia graduate Todd Tanner of Roswell, Georgia, who will travel to Arizona with his wife, Lisa, a 1986 graduate. Tanner said they also will visit the Grand Canyon, 240 miles (390 kilometers) north of Tempe.

``It's not just a football game,'' said Tanner, another buyer of Arizona State season tickets. ``The game just happened to be in a right place for us to take a vacation, too.''

Family History

Steedman said he'll also use the game as the starting point for a vacation. He set aside $750 in gambling money for a one- night layover in Las Vegas. The Bulldogs remain the main focus for Steedman, who said his grandfather, Weddington Kelley, played in the first game at Georgia's Sanford Stadium in 1929 as a sophomore.

He had a plane ticket booked in November and rooms rented in a hotel that had yet to be built, Steedman said.

``In the middle of last football season, I was already planning for this one,'' he said. ``The passion runs a little different down here.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Buteau in Atlanta at mbuteau@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 19, 2008 00:01 EDT