Bowling Green State University Athletics
Breaking Even
September 12, 2006 | Football
Sept. 11, 2006
By JACK CARLE, Sentinel Sports Editor - All the financial details are not in yet, but Bowling Green's journey to Cleveland for its football season-opener should not adversely affect the bottom line of the athletic department's budget.
"It will take four to six weeks to sort out all the dust, but I'm confident that we broke even," BG athletics director Greg Christopher said on Friday about the Falcons' game against Wisconsin in Cleveland Browns Stadium. "I'm glad we did it. I'm glad we tried it. You always like to try different things, new things."
Christopher, who was not the athletics director when the contract to play in Cleveland was signed, said Bowling Green paid a $150,000 guarantee to Wisconsin, the same amount BG received to play in Madison, Wis. last fall. The other big expense was $85,000 for use of Cleveland Browns Stadium. The stadium personnel ran the game from an operations standpoint. Christopher said both numbers were reasonable.
"We didn't hit a home run. It's not going to be a financial windfall for the department," Christopher said. "But given the numbers I've seen from ticket venue coming in versus the outlays ... Once it's all added up, we won't have to be cutting our budget.
"It was a break-even proposition for us."
The attendance was announced at 30,307. Cleveland Browns Stadium has a seating capacity of 73,000.
Christopher said the experience for the athletes and fans and also the exposure gained by the university in the Cleveland area was important.
"It was almost a bowl-like atmosphere. It became a university event, instead of just a football event," Christopher said. "There are some intangibles that go with that that you can't necessarily measure."
While Christopher did not rule out playing another game at a neutral site in the future, he would rather see the Falcons play five or six games in Perry Stadium each year.
"Going forward, is it something that you want to do again? Maybe," Christopher said. "If it's an Ohio State-type situation, I think it makes some sense. In general, my broad philosophy, it would have to really be a home run opportunity.
"I want more home games here. I want to play at least five and if we can swing it financially, six home games every year." Of the four non-Mid-American Conference games each year, Christopher wants to play two teams from non-BCS conferences and two from BCS conferences.
"I would like to think that would position you going into the Mid-American Conference schedule, having some level of success as far as wins and losses, to put yourself in a position to go to a bowl game," Christopher said, adding he would be involved in scheduling of games.
The Falcons have contracts for home games next season with Florida International and Boise State and a game at Pittsburgh. However, the schedule will not be finalized until next spring, Christopher said.
"There are a lot of factors flying around out there ... The conference is rather involved from a scheduling standpoint," he said.
While Bowling Green is playing at Ohio State this season, with a $650,000 guarantee, the future of many more MAC-Big Ten games may be in doubt.
"I don't want to call this an absolute, but there are some athletic directors in the Big Ten ... (who) believe to some degree that Mid-American Conference schools ... are trying to escalate the guarantees to the point that they are getting a little unreasonable," said Christopher, who was an assistant athletics director at Purdue before taking over as Bowling Green's AD in June. "I don't know since I wasn't an AD at a Big Ten school. I'm just repeating what I've heard from more than one AD, that you have some MAC schools pitting some Big Ten schools against each other to raise guarantees.
"I think it will be interesting, go forward the next 10 years and let's look back and see how many times did Big Ten and MAC schools play each other," he added.
Christopher said some Big Ten schools would be willing to schedule Division I-AA teams than pay MAC schools big guarantees.
As an example, Purdue is playing Northern Colorado, Indiana State, Eastern Illinois in the future.
"To sum it up; You don't want to kill the golden goose. We have to be careful of that," he said.
