It's not an excuse whatsoever. It has nothing to do with past results. It's the fact that the Big 12 caters to Texas more than other teams in football. And we have played OU in November before last year.
Playing 6 road games
- Thread starter LarryISU
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It's not an excuse whatsoever. It has nothing to do with past results. It's the fact that the Big 12 caters to Texas more than other teams in football. And we have played OU in November before last year.
It looks to me that the Texas Aggie AD is a whole lot smarter than the ISU AD who makes our dreadful schedules most years.....
HellsBells Boys and Girls I can remember when the grate Donnie Duncan had 8 home games and only 3 road games and still could not win 6 games......Typical of our football coaches and our football program, got to do better than we have for the previous 4 years thats for sure......This is my 55 year of cyclone football and Im still hoping for a bowl game.
The Univ of everything for everyone in iowa city never wanted to play Iowa State ....It was ISU who lobbied for the game and then went on to lose 15 games in a row to the haks...and saw attendance dwindle to little or nothing......
At Dan McCarney's 1st game there couldnt have been more than 30K actual fans in attendance....I was there of course to see Troy Davis win the game by running and running for first downs on the last drive of the game to win the game against a good Ohio U wishbone team.....
Postscript...Quoting Danny Mac..."When Ohio scored late in the 4th qtr I looked into my players eyes and the look said...Here we go again another loss"......
How much does it cost ISU to put on a game?
We Played 7 homes games last year, so that number is actually $2.2 Million. Follow with me...
Look at it in a 2 year period. If we play 13 games, we make $28.6/2 years. Right now, we do not pay MAC teams to do home and homes, we only pay the FCS schools to come here. Lets assume we pay FCS teams $1 Million/year. So currently, in a 2 year period, ISU is netting $26.6 Million/2 years.
Now lets play 7 home games/year, and pay a MAC school each year to come to Ames (which is probably at least $1.5 Million/year, if not more). So now ISU is making $30.8 Million/2 years. Take out the $1 Million each year to play the FCS school and the $1.5 Million each year to play the MAC schools, and ISU is netting $25.8 Million/2 years.
So unless we can find a MAC school to come to Ames for $1.1 Million each year, financially, ISU loses out.
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Serious question, do you have a link to the proof? Or at least point me in a direction where it has been proven?
The only reason I say that is because the stadium is there, the infrastructure is there, we are just paying the people to work, do traffic, etc. In my mind, even if it isn't a sell out, tickets, parking and vending, especially with the SEZ being a sports bar, you'd at least be able to break even by paying a team $800,000 to add that extra home game. Even if it is a break even or a tiny loss, wouldn't it be better to have one more game in Ames?
I would just like to see the numbers that prove it's a losing proposition. It just seems surprising to me that we make less than $800K/football game in total when you include everything that draws revenue during a football game. Plus the bump in revenue for the town of Ames in general would be a bonus.
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that ISU would lose money on the deal, but I'm also not thinking we have to go after top tier Mac teams either.
Big difference between OK coming to Ames in cold weather versus TX coming to Ames. Austin is 350 miles further south than Norman. So those OK boys get exposed to cold weather, well at least quite a bit colder than what they get in Austin. So you don't get the same effect or advantage when OK comes north.
Look at 2015 whan Texas came to Ames on Halloween. ISU 24, Texas 0. Or last year when we demolished Texas Tech, you could see before the game even started, I even mentioned it to others, those Texas Tech players looked like they just didn't want to be there. You would have thought they were in SIberia the way they were so focused on trying to get warm. And it seemed to me our players smell blood in these situations. They see a weakened opponent because of the colder temperature and mentally feel they have the advantage. I could maybe just be imagining all this but the results I think seem to support it.
I agree with mj4cy, the Big 12 coddles Texas, that Halloween game was an aberration. When Texas comes to town, it is almost always the first Big 12 game of the year. Not an accident!
No idea about ISU.
Only thing close I could find was Rutgers cost of 3.2 million/ year (460k per game). Stadium is a 52k capacity so one could draw similarities.
"$1.8 million in program/novelty/parking/concession sales and a cost of $3.2 million in game expenses (which includes fees for officials, security, event staff, ambulance)"
http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/i...s_football_turn_a_profit_in_2015-16_look.html
Correct and if we get an additional FCS team to come to Ames every year (additional 1 mil/year) then ISU both makes money and gets a W. Win/Win! ISU's strength of schedule would prop up any issues with another no-name fcs school.
I am fully supporting the @AdamJGray theory of buying wins while making money.
The problem with this math is that a large percentage of this revenue is season ticket money.
You wont sell enough single game tickets for just about any game for whoever you add.
Now, would it be better for the program long term? If it means greater odds of winning, then one could make that case.
Generally, yes.
The AD sometimes has used the 7 game years to justify a price hike, but then keeps the prices the same the next year when there are 6.
The fact that many p5's do this should be pretty strong evidence going to 7 home games each year isn't a financial slam dunk some think it is.
College football would be so mich better off if there was standard scheduling.
College football would be so mich better off if there was standard scheduling.
This is often correct. They sell the price increase during the 7 game season as "the same price per game as last year" and then the following year (6 games) use the season ticket price as "the same season ticket price as last year." It is a clever way to increase the prices over time without ever having to say you have a price increase.
I'd say we're probably in more rare territory when you start looking over multiple seasons. Not so common for teams to be playing as many road games as us, especially to MAC teams and whatnot. Other teams obviously still do it, just at a lower rate.
I agree that the Big 12 def. coddles Texas, and for that matter all of the teams from down south, but I still don't see us getting a major advantage. Now, if it's as cold as that KU game...then okay. I'll say we have a leg up on anybody that's south of the Kansas border in that case. As far as the Texas game on Halloween, it was awesome beating them up, but they were terrible that year as far as TX standards go. (Finished 5-7).
For the sake of looking it up. Other games we've lost in November/Late October against the southern teams: Tech in '14, TCU in '13, A&M in '08, and Tech in '06.
It's not just the cold weather games. If the Texas game is consistently scheduled in September, for example, not only does UT not have to come up in cold weather, but ISU has to go down there when there is a high likelihood that the temperature on the field is near or over 100 degrees. Teams can really struggle in games when they are acclimated to weather in the 70's and they suddenly have to play a game in triple digit heat.
The weather excuse is ridiculously over played by iowa state fans.
We don't pay FCS teams close to $1 mil to come to JTS. As I posted, we paid NDSU $350,000, and I believe we pay UNI $500,000 for this year's game.
We play UNI (usually a good FCS team) due to in-state political pressure. Not implying anything, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's something along the lines of "You want that SEZ expansion approved, right? You gonna schedule UNI several times in the upcoming years? Wink, wink, nudge nudge."
Why did we schedule NDSU? Yeah - I got nothing.
As far as Iowa fans complaining about playing us, that's more of a self-defense mechanism to help them with coping with the idea that, unlike in the 1980s and most of the 1990s, in any given year they actually can lose to us now.
