ragtimejoe1 said:
Very interesting. Why in the hell are we scheduling FCS? We pay Oregon $350K for a home and home and we pay UC Davis $400K and ND $325K
Meanwhile, we pay Northern Illinois $150K for a home and home.
I get that we don't make a return trip to Davis or ND so we pay them more, but, damn that is a lot of cash for a FCS school. We play in the MWC, so realistically, there is no need for these games.
Since we need to go on the road some anyway in OOC, it seems to me that the most ideal situation is organizing home and homes with other G5 members and 1 road game with a P5 school (hopefully get 1 of these at home, too). I guess that is not realistic and pretty difficult to do. Still, it amazes me that there in not more coordination in the G5 ranks. SOS is critical and it makes sense to help each other out on scheduling.
Any ideas what our take-home is on game days? Are FCS games break even, make some, or lose some?
The money changing hands in home and home arrangements is just a formality. The net payment is $0 if the home and home arrangement is completed.
Your ideal situation is pretty much what we have scheduled. The only problem is that since we can't consistently schedule H&H arrangements with P5 schools we end up with more road games than home games (2 for 1's with UT and Nebraska along with road games at Michigan St, Iowa, Clemson, etc.). To offset that we need to schedule a game that we don't have to return and our only realistic option are FCS schools since any FBS school that wants to play a road money game can go to a P5 and get a $1M payday.
If we said we would only schedule teams that would do a H&H with us, then we could avoid FCS schools entirely, but I think there are a couple of issues with that:
1. Scheduling difficulty - Once you eliminate P5 (don't expect very many, if any, future H&H arrangements with P5 schools) and FCS schools you have a relatively small group of schools (G5) to work with to complete your schedule. It can be tough to manage that and coordinate dates, etc.
2. Financial - While we are playing 2 home and 2 road games in both scenarios, in years where we play a road money game and a home FCS we come out $600k or so ahead since we get paid more for the P5 money game than we have to pay out for the FCS home game. Obviously you have to balance a number of factors, and sometimes it is worth it to give up the revenue to have a more balanced home slate.
3. Interest - I think fans, players, and recruits would like to play the occasional P5 team. Obviously at home would be better, but even on the road I think provides some interest.