Posted by phillydevil on February 08, 10 at 16:18:03:
In Reply to: Re: We only have ourselves to blame posted by 2TimeDevil on February 08, 10 at 15:08:58:
:Just curious, but what were the financial terms of our series with UGA?
(philly) My guess is that when we schedule a home-and-home series (e.g. Georgia, Colorado or Iowa in recent seasons) the financial terms are pretty even. No idea if we split the gate/TV money for both games or if we simply keep all the revenue for the game at SDS while the other school keeps all the revenue for their home game. Either way, my sense is that these series are relatively simple to schedule.
It gets a lot harder when you try to schedule a game at SDS without a return trip. Or a two-for-one series, with two games at SDS and one game at the other school.
In the perfect world, ASU does not want to play any out-of-conference road games except those against our "A" list opponent. That's because we really want/need 7 home games. So in odd-numbered years where we have 5 Pac-10 home games, we can afford to travel to Illinois, LSU, Notre Dame, etc in the years ahead.
But in even-numbered years we ideally need 3 home games at SDS. It's hard to get a school llike a BYU or a Kansas State to come to SDS without expecting a return visit. The only way to get a "one time" opponent to come to SDS is to offer them a lot of money. And without the guarantee of a packed stadium, I bet the AD is reluctant to do this.
The other thing we have to consider is that ASU is not necessarily an attractive opponent for a mid-major school. A low-level mid-major would prefer to get beaten by a team that can pay them a lot of money, and a high-level mid-major (Utah, Boise State, etc.) probably has higher-profile schools interested.
Remember, it takes two parties to make a deal.
We may have to change our approach and start scheduling two "A" level schools per season and/or accept that 6 home games is sufficient. A school like BYU would be a lot more interested in a home-and-home series. What would be really nice would be to find a semi-permanent opponent so we don't have to go through this every year. It's too bad that SDSU downgraded their schedule - they were the perfect mid-level opponent for a home-and-home series because Labor Day weekend in San Diego every other year is a pretty nice road trip.