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In the last several years, LSU has gotten in on a new college tradition of playing a marquee opponent at a neutral site to kick off the season. Those games are going to start paying major dividends for LSU, and not just in the rankings.
According to a report from Ross Dellenger of The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.), LSU is set to take in nearly $9 million from two recently scheduled out-of-conference, neutral site games. The cash is coming from ESPN, which will broadcast both LSU’s game against BYU in Houston in 2017 and against Miami (Fla.) in Arlington, Texas in 2018. LSU will earn $4 million for the BYU game and $4.75 million for the Miami game, according to the report.
LSU opened four of the last five seasons at a neutral site against a non-conference opponent, and the school was paid handsomely for those games as well. According to The Advocate’s report, LSU was paid between $3-3.4 million for facing North Carolina in Atlanta in 2010, Oregon in Arlington in 2011, TCU in Arlington in 2013 and Wisconsin in Houston in 2014. The Tigers will also be paid $2.1 million for a second neutral site game against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field in 2016.
The Tigers aren’t the only SEC team to get in on the neutral site trend. Alabama opened the last three seasons with a neutral site game against a Power Five opponent, Georgia played Boise State in Atlanta in 2011 and Ole Miss took on Boise State to open 2014, among several others.
Over the last decade or so, several annual games of this nature have sprouted up. There’s the Cowboys Classic, played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, as well as the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta, where Alabama met West Virginia in 2014. With college football’s new playoff system, which puts an emphasis on strength of schedule, as well as the new mandate that Power Five teams have to play each other in out-of-conference games, there’s been a push to schedule more and more OOC contests like these.
The SEC has several marquee games on the horizon. Ole Miss and Florida State are set to square off in Orlando to open the 2016 season, while Florida is scheduled to play Michigan in the 2017 Cowboys Classic, with the obvious hope that both teams will be back in national contention by then. Florida will reportedly be paid $6 million for that game, while Florida State will reportedly earn $3.5 million for its game against Ole Miss.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
