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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WWW.KANSAN.COM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2008
VOLUME 120 ISSUE 36
HOW MUCH FOR THAT WIN?
'Buying'games beneficial for all
Big schools receive an almost-sure win, small schools gain money and exposure
Big-name schools, such as Kansas, often pay smaller Division I schools to play them. The smaller schools not only get paid, but also gain the experience of playing in sold-out stadiums against tougher teams.
Becka Cremer/KANSAN
BY B.J. RAINS
rains@kansan.com
How much does it cost to win a college football game?
For the Nebraska Cornhuskers, $2.4 million equaled three wins. For the No. 5 Texas Longhorns, $1.8 million did the trick. And for the Kansas Jayhawks, $1.5 million brought three home wins.
With the goal of six wins and bowl eligibility becoming the norm in college football, more big time college football programs are "buying" games against smaller non-conference schools to entice them to travel to play. The practice, which involves a bigger school paying a large sum of money to a smaller school if it travels to play a game, is a win-win situation for both schools involved.
The smaller schools receive a large payday that, in some cases, helps fund a large portion of its athletics department budget. It also gets the experience of playing in front of a sold-out crowd against a bigger, better team that will help it prepare for the rest of the season.
"We're very dependent on them to be competitive and do the things that we need to do," Donnie Cox, associate athletics director at Northwestern State University, said of the guaranteed money to play those games. "This money doesn't just go to football, it goes to all of the sports. One game can be several hundred thousand dollars. That's a lot of scholarships."
Schools such as Kansas that pay smaller schools to come and play are almost guaranteed to win the game. They are also able to start the season without playing any serious competition and can work on things that will help later in the season. It also helps add to the team's victory total and, once conference play begins, means it needs to win fewer games to become eligible for a bowl game.
Kansas has bought several games recently, including three this season. The Jayhawks paid Florida International and Louisiana Tech $600,000 each to travel to Lawrence
Bigger and richer schools pay teams with a slim chance of winning a large sum of money to come and get beaten.
to play. Sam Houston State, a Division I-AA team, was paid $285,000 by Kansas.
"The price has gone up enormously in the last couple of years," said associate athletics director Larry Keating, who schedules games for both the football and basketball teams at Kansas.
Because the smaller schools try to fund a large portion of their budget from these games, they often to try to schedule games as geographically close as possible to help travel arrangements for both the team and their fans.
"We try to play someone in our region to keep the travel costs down, because the net profit will be more," Cox said, who negotiated a deal with Kansas to receive $275,000 in return for a 48-18 loss at Kansas in 2006. "The kids like to play those games because they like to try and prove that they
can compete at that level. It's a challenge for them and its exciting for them to play those schools."
While schools are dependent on these large checks, some schools such as North Texas would rather be the one making the payment and not the one being paid.
"We don't like being in a non-competitive situation where we are having to force our guys to play a team that obviously is going to be loaded compared to us," said Hank Dickenson, Deputy Athletic Director at North Texas and a 1987 KU graduate. "But as a mid-major football program trying to get better, the reality is, one of those games is something that we need."
Some Division I-AA schools or smaller Division I-A schools used to play as many as four of these games a season in order to fund their budget. But a new rule now forces
each team to play a minimum of five home games each season which limits the number of these types of games they can play.
That makes it much tougher for bigger schools such as Kansas to find teams willing to come play because the number of teams looking for games has gone down significantly.
Kansas will pay Northern Colorado $375,000 dollars to open the season in Lawrence next year.
"It's become very competitive because there are less games out there available for guarantees," Keating said. "It's rare to find someone who sells two games. More and more teams are only playing one of those games where they may have used to play three of them. I think back three or four years ago, there may have been 90 games available to be bought and now that number
is a lot less."
It also means that the price for each game has greatly increased because the larger schools have to become the highest bidder for a smaller team. While the bigger schools try and get smaller schools to schedule the games in advance, many smaller schools will wait as late as possible to try to find a team willing to pay top dollar for their services.
"Most of the teams that sell games don't do it in advance," Keating said. "They will typically wait until a year before or even the spring before because they know that they can get the higher price or highest guarantee the longer they wait. It's just common sense to just sit back and wait.
FOOTBALL
SEE FOOTBALL ON PAGE 5A
Student leaders tackle obscene kick-off chant
BY JOE PREINER jpreiner@kansan.com
Student leaders at the University are urging students to stop the obscene kickoff chant at KU football games.
Matt Erickson, editor of The University Daily Kansan; Adam McGonigle, student body president, and Mike Rivera, one of four captains of the football team, met with members of University Relations and the Athletics Department to discuss alternatives to the offensive phrase.
send an e-mail message to KU students addressing the chant issue. The message will also be played on the MegaVision screen before the football game Saturday morning.
At the meeting, they came up with a plan to
The idea to tackle the chant didn't come
"We have so many unique traditions at the University," Erickson said. "This is not original. We can do better than a line from the
from University officials, but instead from the student leaders. Erickson said a large faction of the student body was opposed to the chant, which originates from a line delivered by Rob Schneider in the movie
"The Waterboy." By addressing the issue on a student-to-student level, he said more students were likely to open their eyes to what the chant was really saying.
"We want to reflect the University with class. We have so many great traditions here. Let's not make this one of them."
The student-led initiative plans to request feedback from students for alternatives to the chant. While the details have not been nailed down yet, Erickson said The Kansan plans to run a campus-wide
dents were trying to keep alive shows the University in a poor light.
Rivera, who is on the field for every game, said he could hear the chant from the sideline. He said the tradition stu-
third-best Adam Sandler movie. We don't need that."
contest, similar to the one it ran to replace the "Muck Fizzon" T-shirts.
MIKE RIVERA Senior linebacker
"We want to reflect the University with class," Rivera said. "We have so many great traditions here. Let's not make this one of them."
Erickson said he also realized many people attended the
games after consuming alcohol, which would make the message harder to drive home. To deal with that aspect, Erickson said he hoped getting the message to students before drinking would help them think about what they were saving.
tor, said the chant didn't paint a true picture of the student body or the University. Student leaders and University officials agreed the issue needed to be addressed. Marchiony said he thought there would be a change, but didn't expect it to be immediate.
"I'm an optimist at heart," Marchiony said. "I think if students shed light on this issue, it might up a lot of people who haven't really given it any thought."
McGonigle shared similar optimism. He said if students stopped to think about how uncomfortable they were making other fans at the game, they should want to stop. He also said one thing people seemed to underestimate was how much people love Coach Mark Mangino.
"He's done so much for the program here," McGonigle said. "If Mangino addresses the crowd with a personable plea, I absolutely think students will listen to and respect him."
Jim Marchiony, associate athletics direc
Edited by Becka Cremer
FULL STORY PAGE 5A
THEATER
Bill T. Jones uses choreography to address controversial themes and to challenge audience members to think about their place in the world. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company will present "A Quarreling Pair" at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Lied Center.
THEATER Contemporary play coming to Lied Center
ENROLLMENT Schedule of classes gets upgrade, facelift
The Office of the University Registrar released a newly designed schedule of classes. The system provides up-to-date information and more search options for students than the old system.
FULL STORY PAGE 2A
index
Classifieds. ... 5B Opinion. ... 7A
Crossword. ... 6A Sports. ... 1B
Horoscopes. ... 6A Sudoku. ... 6A
All contents, unless stated otherwise, © 2008 The University Daily Kansan
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Monthly sales figures show discretionary spending declining as the holiday season nears. ECONOMY 4A
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