Easy money

By Ryan Wood     Sep 9, 2006

Karl Gehring

Some 100 miles east of Shreveport, La., down I-20 sits the small town of Monroe, and in that town is an NCAA Division I-A college football team that has the attention of roughly 20 larger programs each year.

The big schools call because they want to meet the University of Louisiana-Monroe on the gridiron. And, often, not in Louisiana.

ULM athletic director Bobby Staub welcomes each phone call from the big boys, even if it goes nowhere. That’s because the next ring of the phone could make Monroe one giant step closer to making ends meet.

“Right now, it’s kind of slow,” Staub said of the phone calls. “It’ll pick up toward the end of the year.”

Staub then goes on talking, before he stops himself and realizes something. “I had two call me the other day,” he said.

Such phone calls come in cycles, but they always come. Louisiana-Monroe is an appealing school in the eyes of many big-time college football programs looking for nonconference opponents. Why? Because the Warhawks are willing to travel, and they come with the credibility of being a Division I-A school.

Many of the big athletic departments Staub talks to aren’t interested in returning the favor and playing in Monroe. So, they offer a six-figure check to ULM for the team’s troubles.

Seem like a large amount? Just wait. They’re getting even larger.

On Aug. 1, 2004, the NCAA began to enforce legislation requiring all Division I-A schools to play five home games per year. Suddenly, the smaller schools which travel often to boost their budget couldn’t do it so freely. Kansas University associate athletic director Larry Keating estimates that the five-game rule directly or indirectly led to a huge reduction in guaranteed games available – to about one-third of what it used to be.

With that, the basic economic model of supply and demand kicked in, sometimes shooting prices for one-time games into the stratosphere.

KU, for example, will pay $500,000 plus some expenses just for Louisiana-Monroe to show up at Memorial Stadium today for the 6 p.m. game.

That price actually isn’t too bloated. Many other guaranteed games are approaching $750,000 and in rare cases can flirt with $1 million.

It has created new financial headaches for big-school athletic directors, but the option of hitting the road is even less appealing. There’s just too much money to be made at home games with 40,000 or more fans in attendance.

So the market price for nonconference, no-strings-attached opponents will continue to rise, and teams craving home games on its campus will continue to pay.

They have no choice.

“The number of teams that are available for guaranteed games,” Keating said, “have diminished severely.”

Attacking the schedule

Louisiana-Monroe still makes itself readily available. With the new 12-game schedule, Monroe has five dates to fill with nonconference games, since the Sun Belt Conference only has eight teams.

But a seven-game league schedule means ULM sometimes has only three conference home games in a season. With the new NCAA regulation, two more nonconference games must stay at home.

Staub has gotten creative. The Warhawks will play a home game against a I-AA team every year, and ULM has agreed to a long-term deal with Arkansas, where home and away games will alternate. ULM’s home games, though, will be played in Little Rock, Ark.

But that still leaves at least two non-league games that can be sold to the highest bidder – precisely what Kansas took advantage of in February when it agreed with ULM to play today’s game. ULM also will play Alabama and Kentucky on the road later this season.

Kansas, meanwhile, tries to play three of its four nonconference games at home. That was accomplished this year with Northwestern State, Louisiana-Monroe and South Florida all coming to Lawrence. But what Keating is finding out is that dozens of schools have the same line of thinking, and the teeter-totter of home and road teams in Division I-A can get unbalanced.

Therefore, in some short-term cases, the highest bidder gets its way. And Staub, on the receiving end of some of those big checks, makes no apologies.

“At the end of the day, I’ve got to balance my budget,” Staub said. “There’s only about four or five revenue streams out there to make up that revenue that we’ve got to make up. So we’ve got to make it all out.”

Counter attack

To attack it from a different angle, Keating uses the one road game he allows himself each year to his advantage.

Next week’s game at Toledo actually is part of a three-game contract (called a two-for-one). Toledo came to Lawrence in 2004 and will return in 2007.

The most common multi-game contract is the one-for-one, which Kansas has entered with UNLV, Northwestern and South Florida recently. That requires Kansas to go on the road at some point, but also assures one of those precious home dates is filled.

When Keating arrived at KU in 2003, with the football team fresh off a dismal 2-10 season the year before, the Jayhawks were part of the hunted. Keating said a few schools, including Tennessee, inquired about Kansas playing a one-time road game for a large sum. KU did that in 1999 with Notre Dame.

It now is established, especially since attendance figures increased at Memorial Stadium, that Kansas isn’t interested in collecting a check elsewhere. But Louisiana-Monroe is, and will continue to be.

“We look at it as a great opportunity to get our name out there,” Staub said. “It’s games our kids like to play in. I think there’s definite benefits to playing those games other than revenue.”

But the bottom line is the biggest line, and ULM – like other schools – is limited. Football attendance last year averaged only 14,617 in Monroe. Basketball attendance was just 793 per game. The Sun Belt’s revenue is dwarfed by the Big 12 Conference’s. Several other factors – some obvious, some not – make the cash flow more scarce at ULM than at schools twice its size.

Searching for revenue, Louisiana-Monroe and many other smaller schools find the answer often is on the road.

That’s where the money is – now more than ever.

“Right now, I think our best scenario is to have five home, seven road and then the next year to have six home, six road and then alternate it,” Staub said. “That would be the best we could do.

“But at the end of the day, we’re going to need some guaranteed games to make the budget work.”

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