It’s pretty clear it’s a zero revenue strategy.
TU knows what they need to make from money road games.
Then they try to negotiate over that number and take the excess and apply it to purchasing visitors to travel to TU.
Regional FCS teams are usually the only one that will come to TU for straight up cash at a price TU can pay and even they are starting to only show up on weekends when they don’t get better offers. Some won’t come at all because TU can’t bear the market rate.
If you wanna spend $1.5 million on a visiting guarantee, then that will get you the solid bottom third of most of the P5. However, at current economics, it won’t even get you an HBC “band” school like Grambling, Southern or Florida A&M.
Get used to the Central Arkansas visits. Get used to the fact that this is the one thing that Gragg can’t change.
First that won't work as a schedule for our conference or to get bowl eligible since this strategy leads to multiple fcs games a year and only one can count. Second that will only continue to kill our average attendance and drive down our ticket prices.
The AD at Colorado State and the former AD at Arkansas worked together at Michigan a few years back. That probably helped the Rams get that deal.
Oh so you mean their athletic director has connections he can use to get scheduling deals done? Funny how helpful that is. Gragg have any networking skills like that? No? Maybe we should have an AD who does? Or is personable enough to get it done when an opportunity is found? Perhaps he should be looking for opportunities?
Hell Army and BYU struggle to finish out schedules, we should probably try them, they even might wait for return games. In fact the Academies like playing us so toss in AFA as well.
Hard to pay even FCS teams to come play here when we're averaging less than 18k in the stands. Ticket revenue simply isn't there.
This is simply ******** of epic porportions if that is what they are floating as the reason.
Please see Nevada's schedule, UNLV's schedule, San Jose, or Tulane's. All average roughly the same number or less of fans.
Tulane has had GT, Wake, Duke, has a series signed with Northwestern, Kansas St, Iowa St, Army, Miss St., Southern Miss, and UAB
Nevada had Oregon St this year Cal and Purdue coming up.
UNLV has Cal, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Arizona St, Iowa St, BYU
San Jose has Army and Cal, they average 5k in actual people and BYU is trying to work out a series with them.
In fact every team in our conference except for Tulsa has a home and home with at least with a p5 and everyone other than SMU and Navy have two. Navy and SMU have both had two home and home series vs A5 since the formation of the conference in 2013 till now, both have their traditional rivalry game match up of course.
Just looking at the list it seems pretty obvious what teams are open to playing home and homes, they appear on the list multiple times. It's also pretty clear our AD is making zero attempts at scheduling. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut if they are looking for one, he isn't looking.
I apologize for tone which is frustration directed at our AD and the excuses I have heard from him, not fellow fans who have little control over this. This will kill the program though just as much as losing will.