Lucas Gebhart
Sports Editor
The Idaho State Athletic Department has pocketed close to $1 million in the last two weeks as the University of Colorado Boulder and Oregon State University paid to play ISU for an almost guaranteed win.
Colorado paid ISU $500,000 while Oregon State paid $475,000, bringing the total amount of revenue up to $975,000, but it comes at a price.
Players risk injuries in games that have already been decided before they even start.
“I love them as a member of the Athletic Department,” Head coach Mike Kramer said in a press conference on Sept. 7. “But as an ISU head football coach, if we were in the Pac-12, I wouldn’t want to play an NFL team and that is the same thing.”
The money made from these games goes to more than just helping the football program.
The money is divided between all athletic programs. However, men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, cross country and golf see the effects of the big payouts.
“We have a mandate to go and play some of these games,” athletic director Jeff Tingey said. “We need it to create revenue for our department and so Mike knows that and knows that we have to go play games.”
Last season, the Bengals traveled to Boise State, where ISU was paid $425,000 followed by a trip to UNLV that paid $500,000. ISU lost those two games by a combined score of 132-8.
In 2014, the Bengals visited Utah in exchange for $400,000 and Utah State paid $250,000 the following week. The combined score in those games was 94-34.
Most of the time, the big schools contact the small schools and ISU has received offers from top-ranked teams.
“They put out a price and we offer and negotiate,” Tingey said.
The fact that ISU is playing money games is non-negotiable, but what is negotiable, according to Tingey, is the opponent.
When Oregon came calling, Tingey said he knew what Kramer’s answer would be before he even asked.
“I thought, no, there’s no way, but yeah, I’ll ask Mike, maybe he does want to go play them.”
Kramer sees the conversation a bit differently.
“Jeff handles it and he lets me know what the deal is,” Kramer said. “It is really about Jeff’s paygrade too. Jeff schedules them, but we are at pressure from the top down to play these games because this supports not just football. It is a fabric of FCS football.”
“The scheduling falls on me,” Tingey said. “I will speak with Mike about opponents and the style of play that they have.”
The players see these games as an opportunity to showcase their skills in front of a bigger audience.
“I love playing the money games,” linebacker Mario Jenkins said. “You get that different look, and if you do want to go to the next level, you are going against guys that are going to the next level.”
“I think it is a good opportunity for us, it is a good challenge,” quarterback Tanner Gueller added. “They are really good teams, but I think it shows what we can work on pretty obviously.”
“It is what it is, you have to shower it off and go play Sac. State,” Kramer said.
Tingey does his homework before agreeing to the money games.He looks on ESPN.com to find out who is looking for a game and asks other schools what they were paid to play their money games.
The original offer to travel to Corvallis was $325,000, but after doing research, Tingey was able to talk Oregon State officials into paying another $150,000.
“They sent it in an email and I knew that two other conference schools had played them,” Tingey said. “So, I called them up and said, ‘hey what did you guys get?’ And they both mentioned numbers like 425 and 450.”
Tingey used the research to his advantage. Citing the two other games, Tingey asked for $475,000, and got it.
“Often times, when it is on the phone, you can hear them on the other end going, ‘ahhhh darn it, [we] thought we could get away with it.’ But too often we are pooling resources.”
Next season, Tingey has agreed to send the Bengals to Logan and Reno to play two Mountain West schools in the University of Nevada, which will pay $300,000 and Utah State, which will pay $280,000.
Then it is back to the Pac-12 in 2018. The University of California, Berkeley will pay $625,000 to host the Bengals.
Scheduling may change however, as the University of Idaho will be the Big Sky’s 14th team in 2018 and the Big Sky may expand its conference schedule to nine games by 2020.
