The Future of ‘Money Games’
In an article in the Indianapolis Star, Mike Wells discusses conference realignment and potential super-conference formations and their implications on smaller schools. Most small schools, like Ball State and Indiana State, obtain a large part of their funding by going into big time schools’ stadiums and allowing their teams to get beat down. But in the process, they mostly earn some where between $300,000 to $500,000 for their own school.
This begins to be put in jeopardy if there is a formation of 16 team conferences, with 8 teams per division, and an increase from 8 to 9 divisional games. If big schools have to begin playing only 3 non-conference games instead of 4, then that would make it much harder for a team like Ball State to fill up their non-conference/money-raising schedule.
Wells does a good job of breaking down the issue. If there were four 16 team super conferences in the nation, with all of them playing an extra league game, then that would eliminate 64 dates for games that potential non-BCS schools could have a chance at playing against those teams and in the process, generating revenue to continue their programs. That would be a staggering blow for teams that are doing their best just to keep their football programs going through the recent rough economical times.
All these schools can do now is continue to plug along and do their best at filling up their schedules for as many years as possible into the future and hope teams like Texas and Oklahoma do not leave the Big 12 and cause an entire nation gravitation towards super conferences. Most teams are already booked up until 2017 on the non-conference schedule, so there is hope until then that conference realignment doesn’t get out of hand. Although the Big Ten is already getting a plan ready to move to a 9 game conference schedule in 2017 as well.
This article mostly affects the small schools in the nation. It is no secret that a big chunk of their revenue is brought in from scheduling games against big time schools. Other than the small schools, this has little implications for the big time schools. A team like Georgia or Alabama won’t get too bent out of shape if they can no longer fit a team like Coastal Carolina or North Texas on their schedule.
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Another factor that may affect these smaller schools is strength of schedule. No big school who believes they have a great football team every year would want to schedule “cupcake” teams, except to maybe open the season and for their homecoming game. We have seen in recent years how much of an impact strength of schedule is for a team trying to make it to the National Championship game. This is why UGA wanted to play Boise State and LSU wanted to play Oregon to start off the 2011 season. It worked out for LSU, and they have proven that they deserve to be ranked #1 because of the strong teams they’ve played and beaten. It seems as if they are trying to start the college football seasons with games that feel like bowl games, such as the Chick-fil-A game in the Georgia Dome. If more teams begin to try this method, then there eliminates even more of those ‘money games’.
I have always been interested in these “money games” because I was always so confused why a team would want to come and play a big school when they know that they are most likely going to get beaten pretty badly. However, the money I guess levels out the loss on their schedule. They then have money to put into their program to try to make their team better and if they by chance win the game then they can prove themselves in some way. I definitely think that “money games” have helped a lot of teams make it as high in the rankings as they are and without some of those you can have a really tough schedule. I think that with super conferences, and having less of those games, many teams’ records will start to look a lot different.