That's because our 32-year old AD isn't negotiating good enough deals. TX Tech just signed LA Tech up for a home game in Lubbock for only $800K. That's a very low guarantee these days. Anything under $1M shouldn't even be considered without at least looking at the deals over $1M first. Nebraska just signed Arkansas St up for $1.65M to open their season in 2017. So, we look like amateurs at the table.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2...otball-season/
Maybe we should hire ASU's AD.Arkansas State will receive a school record $1.65 million payout for the meeting with Nebraska, ASU Athletic Director Terry Mohajir said.
The Red Wolves' previous record is $1.3 million for games at Southern California this season and at Auburn in 2016. ASU is set to make $4.25 million in game guarantees over the next three seasons.
Good post, DFIH. It's not like we're asking these guys to split atoms. When it gets down to it, our AD is being asked to scheduled one or two football games a year that any joker on the street could NOT schedule. Anybody can schedule our annual home game against an FCS team, and anybody can schedule 2 OOC road games annually for a paycheck. That leaves only 1 HOME game to be scheduled by a supposed "professional" athletic director to get us to a total of 6.
You would think that after all the conference affiliations LA Tech has had over the years, we could get somebody to schedule a HOME game with one of those former WAC or CUSA members from the current MWC or AAC. With the occassional P5 team thrown in for gravy.
A-State schedule 3 top tier P5 schools (regardless of recent performance), anytime Tech has done this in the past we did not go bowling. Go check our schedules if you don't believe me. An FCS, G5, lower P5, and top P5 is a great OOC schedule that we were all screaming/praying for back in the Joakes days. Dooley started getting us there but left too soon and BVDV had us back on the Joackes track. TMac has got our football team out of a big hole and following the Boise State model. And to expect him to schedule to be convenient to some fans is a little cuckoo.
I have often wondered why Tech can't consistently schedule 6 home games per year. Tech needs a minimum of 6 home games per year to garner and maintain fan interest. I have no idea of the demands on budget, but assuming we could balance and grow our budget with one money game per year and 1 FCS/year, how difficult would it to be to schedule two FBS teams home and home? That would give Tech 6 home games every year. It would probably be pretty simple to schedule both the ULX's H & H, but the fan base would scream. Targeting two P5s for H & H would be the answer, but it must be more difficult than we think. Were the AD able to pull it off, history indicates the P5 games would be played in Shreveport, which is undesirable in my opinion.
The TX Tech deal truly sucks. Only $800K for a 2 for 1. We will get beat just as bad playing in Lubbock as we would in College Station. I am very disappointed in this deal, we have gotten MUCH BETTER deals in the past.
I think we are making this harder than it needs to be. We need to schedule one $$$$ game (a P5 team away), if we get in a bowl every year. Then we schedule two home/home opponents one each from two of the other G5 conferences (I pick AAC & MWC, if possible) giving us one home/one away each season and then be done with the two away OOC's. We then fill either our first game of the year or homecoming with a FCS school for our 2nd OOC home game - giving us 6 total.
We now have 300 new $1000 seats (a new $300k) and we will need to only go .500 in conference and .500 OOC to get a bowl (although that's worse case) which should bring us another $500k or so. That is about $800k we didn't have access to before so we scheduled money games which beat up our team and made it very hard to go bowling (especially without the bowl tie-ins we have access to now). The by-product of all this is that we are building a fan base, creating an 'event' (a Tech football game with tailgating,, etc. becomes a 'go-to') and we hopefully get the attendence up to levels where we don't to ever have to look for $$$$ games. Win at home and they will come!
Those eras aren't comparable. There were MUCH fewer bowl opportunities back then. We played 11-game schedules back then and rarely got a I-AA opponent. We played in a tougher conference back then. Today, we have 12 shots to get 6 wins to go bowling. You can't compare a HOME game vs. a bottom tier SEC team (Miss. State) vs. a Top 5 team on the road during the Oakes days. Let's not act like at Texas A&M, at Arkansas, and vs. Mississippi State is murderers row because it's not. We aren't talking about Bama, Auburn, and LSU here. Remember TMac replaced a HOME game with a ROAD game.
Now I'm 100% for an FCS, G5, and 2 P5 programs.
Please explain how TMac got us out of a big hole and is following the Boise State model. I don't see it.
Also, it's not just "some" fans. We are talking a few thousand fans that would've made the 3 previously scheduled games that won't make any of the trips that TMac replaced them with.
Last edited by Dawg06; 05-21-2015 at 10:36 PM.
I think you need to slow your role, we're getting better but there's no way I expect us to come out of those three games anything but 0-3. The Miss St we beat at home is much different than current Moo state, as well as Arkansas is on its way back up.
TMac scheduled us out of 3 SEC west games in one season (aka 95% chance Losses) with less than a year and made money in the process. He replaced them with winnable G5 and P5, would I like to have more home games sure, but I'd rather not see us get shellacked 3 games in a row and possibly hurt our players in the process. TTU has had flashes (mainly through high octane offensives) but is definitely a hill we can climb (see OSU). I just want to make sure that if it is a 2-1 the one is NOT IN SHREVEPORT! It would be awesome if we could get some of the 2 in Heart of Dallas season opener.