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Why USF will schedule 2-for-1s and UCF won’t: Bulls’ home games aren’t nearly as profitable | Commentary
USF will schedule two-for-ones and UCF won’t because the Bulls' home games aren’t nearly as profitable as the Knights' home contests.
Running off at the typewriter …
For all of the UCF bashers out there who are wondering why USF is willing to give up an extra home game to schedule two-for-ones against the likes of Alabama, Florida and Miami while UCF won’t, it’s really quite simple.
Just follow the money trail.
UCF makes a ton of money on its home games — between $3 and $4 million and rising as the Knights continue to find creative ways to add premium seating to Spectrum Stadium — while USF doesn’t make much money at all on a typical home game.
The Knights not only have a much bigger season-ticket base than the Bulls, they also — because they have their own on-campus stadium — get to keep everything they makes in ticket sales, concessions and parking. The Bulls have to pay for the use of city-owned Raymond James Stadium and hardly get any of the parking and concession money, which mostly goes to the city and the stadium’s main tenant — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That right, the Bucs actually make money on Bulls games.
Believe me, if cash-strapped USF was making $3 or $4 million per home game, athletics director Michael Kelly would not be giving up these games just so the Bulls could go and get trampled in Tuscaloosa.
Because USF plays in a big NFL stadium that is often more than half-empty for home games, it actually makes financial sense for the Bulls to go on the road twice in return for a single home game against Alabama or Florida. For USF, one home game against the Gators or the Crimson Tide will fill all 66,000 seats at Raymond James Stadium (at premium ticket prices) and probably almost triple the revenue of a normal home game.
In addition, the Gators and the Crimson Tide are enticed because their fans get access to tens of thousands of tickets at Raymond James Stadium, which means it really won’t be a true road game. In fact, you could say the Bulls aren’t playing a two-for-one with Alabama and Florida; they’re playing a two-for-neutral.
UCF athletics director Danny White has made it clear he’s only in the market for home-and-homes against Power 5 teams and is simply not willing to give up millions of dollars in home-game revenue to schedule two-for-ones. And even if he did offer up a two-for-one, it’s not like Alabama or Florida would agree to play at Spectrum Stadium, where the visiting team only gets 3,000 tickets.
“There are schools where it doesn’t matter if it’s a home-and-home or a two-for-one,” White says. “If a school has enough resources and tradition with their fan base, I’m not naïve enough to think we’re going to get some blue-blood to come play in our 45,000-seat stadium when they only have 3,000 fans. … That’s just not happening. I’m not even trying to get those types of games because it’s not realistic.”
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: As an avid college football fan, I would love it if UCF acquiesced, bent over backward and scheduled two-for-ones or two-for-neutrals with some of the big boys of college football. However, White is doing the right thing by being fiscally responsible as well as sending a symbolic message that UCF is not just another humpty-dumpty homecoming opponent for the Alabamas and Floridas of the world.
This has nothing to do with this ridiculous rhetoric circulating on social media about USF having the guts to play Alabama and Florida while UCF doesn’t.
Puh-leeze.
UCF has offered to play both schools as well as Miami on a home-and-home basis.
As with most things in life, this is about money.
The bottom line, as always, is the bottom line.
