Football fans care about the preseason, but not in the way the NFL wants them to.

The National Football League's preseason is superfluous at best and a looming disaster at worst. Fans cross their fingers hoping that their team's stars or their fantasy team's cornerstones make it through unscathed. Stars like Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald seethe when the league's Hall of Fame Game, which kicks off the preseason on Aug. 3, isn't part of the four-week preseason, but a fifth preseason game for both the Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys.

Even the most anticipated game of the preseason, former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo's announcing debut on CBS in Week 3, should make fans nervous. At least this year they'll only worry about how Romo will transition into the booth and work with colleague Jim Nantz, and not if the notoriously fragile Romo will make it to Week 1 without being horrifically maimed.

What's worse is that the league and its team owners know these games are both trumped-up scrimmages and liabilities, but they absolutely refuse to part with them if it means taking a loss. A few years back, owners attempted to cut the preseason in half, but only to add two more weeks of regular-season play. Players and coaches pushed back, which leaves us where we are today: With 65 pseudo-games that few people watch and even fewer attend.

Only about a handful of those games actually compel fans to leave their homes (or their waning days of summer vacation) for the stadium. The reigning Super Bowl champion New England Patriots play their first preseason home game on Aug. 10 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ticket resale and aggregation site TicketIQ says the average resale price for that game already tops $250. A rare appearance by the Green Bay Packers in Denver on August 26 has Broncos fans (or maybe just Cheeseheads in Bronco country) shelling out $270 a head. Even a preseason matchup between the Cowboys and Houston Texans in Houston inspires proud Texans to lay out an average of $291.

The biggest draw, however, is the Super Bowl runner-up Atlanta Falcons and their new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The nearly $2 billion makes its NFL debut on August 26, with tickets for each of the Falcons' two preseason games fetching between $300 and $360. They would have invited fans in sooner, but they're playing the first half of the preseason on the road just to allow time for the stadium to be completed.

Otherwise, there is some impressive indifference toward the preseason. With help from TicketIQ, we found ten games where you can not only get in for less than $10, but where some of the average tickets cost less than parking.