With all 20,086 seat tickets for the NCAA Division I football championship game between No. 1 seed Sam Houston State University and No. 2 seed North Dakota State University sold or allocated to the participating institutions, the tournament will exceed 250,000 attendees. The previous total attendance record was 209,761 set in 1994.

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The sellout of the 2012 Division I football championship game also will make it the largest attended game in the last four years.

“Along with the record attendance throughout the national semifinals, we’ve seen incredible competition that is the trademark of FCS football,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert. “These teams – and the fans who root for them – are sure to enjoy one of the best FCS championship games ever. I share the excitement of every school, student-athlete and fan that has taken part in this tournament, and I personally look forward to being in the stands on January 7.”

To accommodate the demand for championship game tickets, the NCAA and the local organizing committee in Frisco, Texas, are bringing temporary bleacher seating into the stadium. The bleachers will be utilized by each school’s band and cheerleading teams, which allows for the schools to make extra seats available for fans.

Tickets returned by the institutions, along with a limited amount of standing room only tickets, will be sold to the general public starting Jan. 3 at 11 a.m. (ET) on www.NCAA.com/fcs.

“Frisco’s track record of support for sports and big events led us to believe that eventually, we could sell out the FCS championship game,” said Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Southland Conference and one of the host groups for the championship game. “Obviously we are very, very pleased that has happened in the second year of the event.”

The game will be played Jan. 7 at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco at 1 p.m. ET on ESPN2HD/ESPN3. The ESPN broadcasts of the FCS championship game have averaged more than a 1.0 Nielsen rating in six of the past seven years as well. This equates to more than one million viewers nationally.

The championship game attendance record was set in 1995 when 32,106 fans watched the University of Montana defeat Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va.

By The NCAA