Profiting On Defeat

By Sean · Monday, August 28, 2006 · 2:28 PM |  Share | Leave a Comment 

A great article was written in the New York Times last week analyzing how much money lower-level college football programs receive to play powerhouses from all around the nation. It was very interesting to see how much money some of these schools, which many are not even Division I-A caliber, receive to basically be run over by the best of the best.

One of the things discussed in the article was how Buffalo basically stiffed West Virginia and Rutgers to play Wisconsin and Auburn instead. The new total that Buffalo will receive for playing the two teams is going to be equal to $1.2 million. That’s a lot of money for a school like Buffalo. The money will be used to upgrade their facilities, which could lure in recruits.

You can obviously see why Buffalo decided to change two of their games, but the way they went about doing it was very unprofessional. Without any notice, West Virginia was suddenly left with a schedule that had a missing game. Buffalo just broke the contract and dropped WVU from their schedule like that, and forced the Mountaineers to scramble to find a new opponent.

The reason behind all of these big-money payouts to smaller schools is because of the new NCAA rule that states every team must play at least 12 games during the regular season. Some of the best teams in the country fill that void by adding illustrious matchups against other great teams, while most just add a creampuff opponent. Michigan added Vanderbilt to the schedule when the 12th game was in need of being filled, and that’s not a totally bad opponent. They’re a decent team. Other schools, such as Wisconsin and Auburn, use that opening to put in some of the worst teams in the country.

Why exactly do these schools travel all that way just to be slapped around for 60 minutes? Well, simply because of those dollar signs. Money that reaches into the millions for a low-rate school can provide big updates to their football program that couldn’t happen any other way. Some schools are actually becoming filled with greed when it comes to receiving payouts to be played against. That is resulting in highly-acclaimed teams paying less to play Division I-AA opponents, which aren’t even close to being on the same level. Iowa, for example, is a team doing this. They put Montana on the schedule for the cost of giving $650,000 to the Grizzlies.

This trend of paying low-quality teams to play you could eventually turn into a problem. With 12 games a season, who wouldn’t want to play a team like Buffalo. I can definitely see where teams are coming from, both on the side of paying and receiving money for the games, but something like this is going to just lead to all schools that are national title contenders filling their schedules with lowly teams that won’t even present the slightest challenge. I’m not saying that there is a way to stop this, because that could be very complicated, but you do have look at this as a problem down the road.

The only way to make teams want to play other great teams is to put some type of strength of schedule back in the BCS. The voters in the polls apart of the BCS may take a team’s schedule into some sort of consideration when making their rankings, but it isn’t a sanctioned part of the BCS. All that would be needed is a list of a team’s opponent’s combined win-loss record. It would be a simple way to water-down a growing concern.