Are the FCS “Bodybag” Games Still Worth It? Depends on Who You Ask
· Yahoo Sports
On Friday night in Eugene, Oregon the Ducks pounded their lone FCS opponent of the year. Portland State came in and… to the surprise of absolutely no one… got ran out Autzen Stadium. The final score? 84-0. Oregon picked up 43 first downs in the game compared to PSU’s five. They had 726 yards of offense and had pretty much every single starter out by halftime. The Vikings barely eclipsed 100 yards on the whole night and didn’t even hold the ball for 19 minutes of game time. As staggeringly lopsided as all those numbers are, they don’t really cause most college football fans to bat an eye. Not in a game like this.
They’ve been called “pay” games, “tune-up” games or even “bodybag” games. FBS schools write a lofty check to have an FCS program come in during the early season and take a shellacking. Oregon cut Portland State $590,000 for Friday evening’s beatdown. And it is not nearly the only one of its kind. Last year’s national runner-up Miami paid Florida A&M $740,000 to take a 77-7 loss in a game that was so out of hand both coaches agreed to shorten the fourth quarter to ten minutes just to get it done sooner. A similar thing happened in Arizona State’s 70-7 beating of Morgan State (a game that doled out $600k to the Bears).
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With results like that the question that has naturally risen to the forefront is of the value of these sorts of early-season games. How important and necessary are they? What’s the point when everyone knows what the result is going to be well before it even kicks off? The answer… as it is to most things in today’s college football… is not nearly as straightforward as most would like it to be.
First and foremost there needs to be a distinction made between what constitutes a true “bodybag” game. It is not at all unheard of for FCS teams to thrive when they play a level up. In fact, five teams from the subdivision have beaten FBS opponents already this year. In some cases (see Montana State’s 20-7 victory over Nevada) the FCS club actually even is the better team straight up and doesn’t need some “hold on for dear life” miracle at the end to come out on top. Illinois State had a 21-0 lead on Northern Illinois at one point in their big win last weekend as well. These sorts of matchups ought not to be classified in the same realm of what we saw in Eugene and they do, unquestionably, have value.
For the FCS team, it’s not only a payday but a great chance to really test their mettle against likely some of the stiffest competition they’ll see all season. And if they are able to get the win it’s a huge boost to their resumes when playoff time comes around. Illinois State now has their win over NIU to point to as a reason why they should be seeded higher than someone else if it comes down to that by season’s end. That, of course, can result in more home games throughout the postseason which in turn is bonus revenue opportunity for the athletic department when it comes to ticket/concession sales and so on.
Of course the flip side to that is that it is a high risk-low reward scenario for the FBS teams like Nevada and Northern Illinois that schedule these games. There is still value, though, in getting another game’s worth of film, another day’s worth of fans in the stands (and the money that comes with) and… at least in theory… having what is often seen as an “easier” opponent to get things right against before the meat of conference play begins. While it didn’t necessarily work out for a few, it still has for almost everyone.
Boise State, for instance is a CFP hopeful this year and will likely need a perfect record to get there. They play South Dakota on Saturday at home. As good as USD is in the FCS, the Broncos would still rather see that game in their own stadium than having to travel to somewhere to take on a team more on their level. The simple odds will tell you, a win against the ‘Yotes at home will probably come a heck of a lot easier than a trip to say Fargo against North Dakota State.
How about the games where the gap is really, really wide, though? What true value comes from Oregon’s thrashing of Portland State? For the Ducks, honestly not a heck of a lot. Oregon probably did not learn much about itself and sure, it was an opportunity to get back in the win column after last week’s bad loss to Oklahoma State, but other than that it does nothing for Dan Lanning and company besides get fans in the building one more time. It’s a win that doesn’t even register on the resume when it’s time for the Playoff committee to decide Oregon’s fate in December.
The spending thing is not really an issue, though. $590,000 is not a lot of coin to Oregon but it sure is for Portland State. The Vikings probably happily agreed to this game when it was decided years ago and, even knowing they were going to get decimated, signed that contract with a smile on their collective faces. That money will go a long ways in funding what PSU does for the entire year now and not just in football. While some of the top tier FCS teams don’t always need the big payday to just simply function, Portland State… and many, many teams like them… do. It keeps the lights on for everyone for another year in a college sports world that is only getting more and more expensive.
While Portland State is not going to be in contention for the FCS playoffs this year, for the teams that will, these losses do not really harm their resumes either. If Mercer, for example, loses to Georgia Tech on Saturday like they’re expected to, that won’t count against them if they’re on the playoff bubble. And if they perform well and give the Yellow Jackets a run? That will be something that will be considered, at least little, when looking at them as a whole.
Finding the value in these sorts of games is, admittedly, tough sometimes when you get what happened over in Oregon. At first glance it’s easy to see it as a useless game but in reality it’s actually only mostly useless to one side. And yet it can’t totally be or teams like Oregon would not continue to work them into the schedule. Everyone… maybe save for the fans… gets a little something from it.