Regardless of what the scoreboard reads after finishing its road game against Auburn University, the winless Ball State University football team is guaranteed to get one thing: its largest payday in program history.
Ball State will receive an athletics department record $800,000 for traveling to play this road game Saturday against an undefeated Auburn team receiving votes in the national polls.
In college football these types of agreements are common for non-conference games, but the details are rarely made public. This contract between Ball State and Auburn is detailed in documents obtained through the Indiana Access to Public Records Act.
Despite the high amount for this game, Ball State athletics director Tom Collins said this is part of the price of playing in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
"That was the going rate at the time," he said. "If there are teams that are willing to do it and teams that want to play more home games, than it is going to happen."
This contract between the two schools was signed in January 2004 - almost two years before Collins arrived at Ball State and when Bubba Cunningham was the Cardinals' athletics director. Cunningham, who is now the athletics director at the University of Tulsa, was unavailable for comment on this contract he arranged for Ball State.
In the original contract, Ball State was to receive $750,000 for playing Auburn in 2008, but the contract was renegotiated in August 2005 at Auburn's request to move the game back one year. In this revised contract, Ball State received an additional $50,000 to reschedule the game.
Despite not being involved in either Auburn negotiations, Collins said the price to a play a non-conference road game against a team from a Bowl Championship Series conference like Auburn has significantly increased since he arrived at Ball State in December 2006. Auburn Associate Athletics Director Scott Carr said the Tigers and other schools in the Southeastern Conference now pay opponents from smaller conferences between $600,000 to $1 million to play these games in their stadiums.
"That's what contracts are calling for, and paying that type of rate is becoming the norm," he said.
The game against Auburn will not be first time Ball State will receive more than $400,000 to play a road game against a BCS conference team.
In the last four seasons, Ball State was paid $725,000 for playing a road game against the University of Nebraska in 2007 and $495,000 for playing a road game against the University of Michigan in 2006. It also received $325,000 for playing the University of Illinois in Champagne, Ill., in 2007.
Similar to the Auburn deal, all of these contracts were one-game agreements. With a one-game contract, the price a road team receives significantly increases compared to signing a one-and-one contract, where each team gets one home game, or a two-and-one contract.
Ball State will play the University of South Florida, a BCS conference team, in the 2011 and 2012 season. However, because it is a one-and-one contract each school will receive less than $300,000 after playing its road game. In addition, Ball State had a two-and-one contract with Indiana University that ended last season and received a combined $400,000 for its two road games, while paying Indiana $150,000 to play in Muncie in 2006.
Despite the money being significantly more, Collins said he prefers to sign more one-and-one contracts instead of one-game contracts like he inherited with Auburn.
He also said one of his biggest considerations when scheduling is balancing out the schedule to have two non-conference home games each season. As a result, Collins said he has tried to schedule more games against Football Championship Subdivision teams like the University of New Hampshire and one-and-one contracts with smaller FBS schools like the University of North Texas.
"If you play too many of those guarantee games or too many BCS teams I think it does put you at a disadvantage," he said. "Hopefully we wouldn't get into a boat where we have too many BCS games out there, that we have a nice little mix."
Unlike Ball State, Carr said Auburn's philosophy is to set up its non-conference schedule each year to give the Tigers a realistic chance at an undefeated season. He also said, Auburn will usually schedule three of its four non-conference games against teams from non-BCS conferences like the Mid-American Conference and have a one-and-one contract with a BCS conference team.
The Ball State game will be Auburn's second non-conference game against a team from non-BCS conference. Auburn opened its season with 24-point win against Louisiana Teach - a member of the Western Athletics Conference - and will play Furman University - an FCS team - in November.
For Auburn, giving big paydays to secure more home games than road games in the non-conference season is possible, Carr said, because of its fan support, which regularly fills the 87,451 seats at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
"When you are working at a sell-out capacity, you can still profit off of these games," Carr said.
With all its non-conference games, Carr said Auburn tries to schedule as many games far in advance because the closer negotiations are to the playing date, the more leverage a road team has to request more money. Carr and Collins said scheduling a game five years in advance could become difficult though.
At the time the contract was signed, Ball State had finished the 2003 season 4-8 and had failed to make a bowl game for the seventh consecutive season. However since the agreement, has Ball State has made two straight bowl games.
"Some of those games at the time that they are signed everyone thinks that this is going to work out real well," Collins said. "Things change in the time period then."
Collins said money is not the only factor for scheduling these non-conference games. He said Ball State views road football games as a way to develop recognition for the university in the different regions and a chance to reach out to alumni in the area.
However, Collins also said the money coming from these games goes a long way to benefit the athletics department.
The $800,000 received for this game will go toward the athletics department's general revenue fund that can be used by all 18 Ball State teams, Collins said.
"We have an obligation to balance our budgets," he said. "We have a financial responsibility to pay the bills as we go along."
After Ball State lost its first three games to open the season, Collins said he knows beating Auburn on the road will be difficult. He also said, though, the final score may not be what his student athletes remember from this game.
"It will be a great experience for our student athletes to play in that environment and in Auburn," he said. "That will be something our athletes will always remember."
Football Database How much money Ball State has spent and received from non-conference games since 2006
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