How South Alabama got Oklahoma State to travel to Mobile

The weirdest game of college football’s Week 2: the No. 11 Oklahoma State Cowboys visiting the Sun Belt’s South Alabama Jaguars in Mobile, Ala., at 8 p.m. ET Friday (ESPN2).

Teams from the power conferences playing young programs from the smaller conferences isn’t weird, if the smaller team is the one traveling. A Big 12 team like OSU will shell out somewhere between $400,000 and about $1 million to host a Sun Belt team like USA. The big school gets a win, and the little school gets cash.

But when the big teams visit the little teams, that’s pretty weird. Last year saw Miami play at Appalachian State, and the Hurricanes were to visit Arkansas State this weekend before Hurricane Irma led to the game’s cancellation.

The mid-major team agrees to make two road trips, spaced apart by a year or three. The Power 5 team gets two theoretically easy home games, and in return, it makes one visit to its smaller opponent. That means two cushy home games for the big school.

It also saves money in the long run. Oklahoma State could pay something like a $900,000 guarantee to get a Group of 5 team to Stillwater, no problem. But OSU’s approach recoups some of that.

Friday’s game is the first of three scheduled between USA and OSU. The terms of their agreement, per a contract obtained by SB Nation:

Oklahoma State comes out one home game ahead, just like it would if it’d scheduled a one-off game against any mid-major. But it’s only paying a $625,000 net to do it. Oklahoma State has signed similar deals with teams like Tulsa and Central Michigan in the past.

“The way I kind of look at a two-for-one is you get a home-and-home,” South Alabama athletic director Joel Erdmann says. “You take our home game and one of the away games at Stillwater, and it’s a home-and-home. You know what I mean?”

USA’s getting a smaller guarantee than it otherwise would for a Big 12 visit, but Erdmann thinks the school can make up the difference through increased ticket sales and “adjoining sponsorships” for a really big Oklahoma State game.

South Alabama’s done two other series like this, against NC State and Mississippi State. The Jaguars came out better financially for the MSU series, which featured a neighboring-state opponent. Erdmann expects his school’s revenues to come in somewhere between the two for this game.

It’s not a perfect deal for the smaller team. All three games will be hard, even though the Jaguars won at Mississippi State in 2016.

“I’m not sure if we’ll do it again, unless circumstances change. But we think that this particular game and this particular date is a great opportunity,” Erdmann says.

These things can also catch the attention of other Power 5 programs, if the smaller school demonstrates it can move the attendance needle:

App State made a bunch of cold calls. The pitch was based, primarily, on two things.

“We just started calling people, and I think part of our sales pitch was, ‘Boone’s a great place to play.’ It’s a great place for opposing fans to come visit,” Gillin said. “It’s a resort area in the mountains of North Carolina. And then, the second part of that, what I was telling folks on the return trip: we travel really, really well.”

The Mountaineers gained confidence, the Winston-Salem Journal reports, from landing a series with the nearby Wake Forest, a conference mate of Miami’s, and noticing the Hurricanes had been willing to schedule home-and-homes with mid-majors Arkansas State and Toledo.

On the home-and-home idea, Miami bit. Ten months before kickoff, Gillin struck a deal with Hurricanes athletic director Blake James, and this year’s game only got bigger when Miami hired former Georgia coach Mark Richt.

“When you’re driving around town and on billboards and on advertising and on radio and electronic and print advertising, when you see a Jaguar helmet facing a Cowboy helmet, that sends a certain message,” Erdmann says, “and I think it excites the people of Mobile and our region.”

South Alabama might not sell the game out, but the Jaguars will get closer than usual to filling 33,471-seat Ladd-Peebles Stadium. This is a program that’s only existed since 2008 and that’s only counted as an FBS opponent since 2012. It’s one of the sport’s true startups, and on Friday night, there’s a decent chance you’ll be watching it.

“We made a conscious choice,” Erdmann says. “When we gave birth to the program in 2008 and began playing as an FBS counter in 2012, and an FCS counter in 2011, that we wanted to provide our fans with a tremendous home schedule, the best that we could, and also work towards a type of awareness and visibility regionally and nationally the best we could — to help us get on the map, per se.”