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Indiana is paying FCS Idaho an unbelievable amount of money
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
Guarantee games have long been a part of college football as low-major or lower-division teams routinely travel to higher-profile programs in return for what’s normally a 6- or 7-figure payday.
Indiana and Idaho are no different.
As USA Today’s Paul Myerburg writes, back in 2015, the programs came to an agreement that would see the Vandals take on the Hoosiers in Bloomington for a pair of games: the 1st on Saturday and the 2nd in 2022.
As part of the agreement, Indiana would pay Idaho $1.3 million.
However, the landscape’s changed in the past 6 years. In 2016, Idaho announced that it would drop its college football program from FBS to FCS as a cost-saving move. But the deal between it and Indiana was never modified:
The initial agreement between the two schools was signed in June 2015, nearly a year before Idaho announced its intention to drop out of the FBS ranks. There were then two amendments to the contract, the first in February 2017 and the second that December, moving the dates of the games into their currently scheduled slots — this Saturday and Sept. 10, 2022.
Indiana did not attempt to renegotiate the terms of the two-game agreement after Idaho moved down to the FCS, athletics department spokesperson Jeremy Gray told USA TODAY Sports.
Idaho will certainly have zero complaints about that. Even though the Vandals are likely to be blown out at Memorial Stadium both on Saturday and in the 2nd game of the series in 2022, at least the program will be $1.3 million richer.
And, as Myerburg adds, they’ll be getting $675,000 to take on Oregon State in Corvallis on Sept. 18.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
