College football guarantee games pay millions to small-budget schools but opportunities could shrink

Published Sep. 17, 2024 12:26 p.m. ET

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Ohio State and Kent State, separated by 135 miles in the same state, occupy extreme ends of the spectrum of major college football.

Buckeyes football pulled in $127 million in revenue in 2023. Golden Flashes football has a budget of about $9 million.

Still, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork and Kent State AD Randale Richmond share a similar problem for different reasons. Both look at their football schedules this season and see more so-called guarantee games than they would prefer.

Guarantee games are those one-off matchups where a school pays another to come to its stadium, with no return date. For power conference schools such as No. 3 Ohio State that typically means cutting a check of around $1.5 million — give or take a few hundred thousand — to a school such as Kent State.

More often than not, the games are not competitive. Occasionally, the smaller program gets to take home a historic victory along with a big check the way Northern Illinois ($1.4 million) did at No. 17 Notre Dame or Memphis ($1.3 million) did at Florida State earlier this season.

But as the model for compensating athletes evolves and more money needs to be directed to players, all the ways business has traditionally been done in college sports are being evaluated. The guarantee game seems unlikely to go away any time soon, but Bjork and Richmond are unsure if they will be as common as they are now.

“I think we have to put it under review to see what is the future of those kind of games,” Bjork said.

By the numbers

This season at least 60 guarantee games will be played matching schools that play in the NCAA's highest level of Division I, the Football Bowl Subdivision, with total payouts reaching $75 million, according to AP research.

There are also dozens more games matching FBS teams with those in the second-tier Championship Subdivision that follow a similar structure, but with smaller payouts. The most famous guarantee game — Appalachian State’s 34-32 upset at No. 5 Michigan in 2007 — included a $400,000 check for the visitors.

Ohio State's anomaly

For Ohio State, a confluence of events, including conference realignment, left the Buckeyes with a three-game nonconference schedule of guarantee games in 2024. Typically, the Buckeyes have one high-profile game against a power conference opponent that would be one end of a home-and-home series.

Ohio State had a home-and-home against Notre Dame in 2022 and '23, is set to play Texas in 2025 and '26, and Alabama the following two seasons.

This year, however, Ohio State is paying $4.05 million for games against Akron, Western Michigan and Marshall. The Buckeyes beat Akron and WMU by a combined 108-6 and are heavily favored against the Thundering Herd on Saturday.

It's not so much that $4.05 million will break Ohio State athletics, which reported nearly $280 million in revenue in 2022. The school made more than $64 million in ticket sales for eight games at Ohio Stadium (capacity 102,780) in '22, according to the latest financial records provided to the NCAA.

Games that don't involve Big Ten or marquee nonconference opponents drag down revenue in areas such as concessions, souvenirs and parking. Ohio State's gameday revenue for Akron and WMU were almost identical, Bjork said.

"Meaning there’s a ceiling on those those type of games from a revenue standpoint versus when I look at our projections for a Big Ten opponent. Those games can be double, triple, quadruple the amount of revenue that we’re seeing for a guarantee,” he said.

Essentially, Ohio State is bringing in less and paying out more for guarantee games, he said.

Often Ohio State plays two guarantee games in a season to ensure having at least seven home games, but will that even be worth it if the school will soon be setting aside upward of $20 million in revenue per year to pay to its athletes?

The NCAA and power conferences, including Ohio State's Big Ten, are working toward a settlement of a series of antitrust lawsuits that will cost $2.78 billion in damages and set up a new revenue-sharing system to pay athletes.

"Everything is under evaluation," Bjork said when it comes to how money is spent and made in big-time college athletics.

Power conference teams also have to consider schedule strength with an eye toward making the playoff and how matchups against lesser opponents impact television partners paying hundreds of millions to broadcast games, Bjork said.

Kent State's conundrum

On the other end is Kent State, which will receive $3.9 million for games at Pitt, No. 6 Tennessee and No. 10 Penn State. The Golden Flashes have lost the first two by a combined 126-24, including Saturday's 71-0 loss in Knoxville. They play at Penn State on Saturday.

Richmond, who took over at Kent State in 2021, inherited this three-game stretch and said he would prefer no more than two. One or two per year is the norm for lower-budget, non-power conference schools.

“I don’t love the model and at the same time understand the things that we have to do financially to run this athletic department, because we do have a great opportunity to impact the lives of young people,” he said last week. “And we can only do that if we are meeting our budgetary demands and needs.”

Richmond is also well aware that it is a lot to put on his football team and second-year coach Kenni Burns.

“It makes it very difficult to gain momentum when you have three guarantee games. I can’t answer whether it’s fair or not. I can answer that it does make it difficult,” he said.

Kent State also has three guarantee games booked for 2025 (at Texas Tech, Florida State and Oklahoma), but Richmond believes the administration is motivated to explore moving away from these types of schedules.

Kent State might not have a choice.

Dave Brown, whose software and subscription service Gridiron helps schools schedule nonconference games, said guarantee games are increasingly becoming a buyer's market with more schools moving into FBS recently and the Big Ten no longer discouraging its members from playing FCS games.

If the Southeastern Conference were to move to a nine-game conference schedule in 2026, which it is considering, that would remove 16 more potential opportunities for guarantee games.

"That’ll really hurt the market," Brown said.

As with most things in college sports, the wealthiest programs will ultimately determine the direction this goes and how often big schools play the smaller ones. While Richmond would like Kent State to play fewer guarantee games, none is not the goal.

“Being tethered together is always the best thing (for FBS), in my humble opinion," he said. “I don’t know that Kent State has an option to dictate whether that’s the case or not.”

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

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