How greed ruined the MSU-Florida Atlantic game

Let's start with a pretty blanket statement and work from there, shall we?

There is no reason MSU should draw a piss-ant 25,000 fans to a game anywhere in Michigan, much less Ford Field in Detroit. Yes, I know it's Florida Atlantic. I get that. But this game should have sold out.

Here's the theory: Spartan Stadium seats 75,005. Ford Field seats 65,000. Detroit likely has more MSU alums within an hour's drive than East Lansing does. Even allowing for the fact that this is "out of the norm" so people have to go "out of their way" to see the game, one would figure that attrition to hit no more than 10,005 fans, right?

Instead, as of right now a scant 25,000 tickets have been sold. It might be a joke if this wasn't so egg-on-face embarrassing.

So what happened?

Well, the game was priced wrong and sold wrong. And as your mother always told you, two wrongs don't make a right.

Let's look at the regular ticket prices for a moment:

On FAU's end: Individual game tickets at Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale sell at a range from $12-25 a pop. There's a slight discount on for season ticket holders that can take the best seats down below $21 a game.

On MSU's end: Regular games are sold at $49 a pop, aside from Notre Dame this year which is going for $75 a seat. Full-price public season tickets include seven home games for about $44 a game.

Sideline seats for MSU-FAU started at $79 each.

Yes, that's right, some marketing genius decided that Joey Spartan would rather pay MORE MONEY to see his alma mater play FLORIDA ATLANTIC than NOTRE DAME.

Folks, that's nothing short of greed.

Here's why. Lockhart Stadium seats 20,450 when full (which it rarely is). Ford Field, as I mentioned above, seats 65,000. If this game were at FAU's current stadium AND they charged everyone regular sideline ticket prices with no discount AND it sold out, FAU would take in about $511,000.

That number's high because of my unrealistic caveats, but let's be generous and say that they'd actually take in around $400,000 once you factor in the discounts they're giving.

If they sold out Ford Field at that price, they'd make more than quadruple that amount, or $1,625,000. Even with paying MSU for the road game ($500K?) and covering FAU's travel costs (Maybe $200K), they'd still clear more than double their usual home game amount.

What if they decided to be a little greedy (but still very reasonable) and sell only the good seats at Ford Field at MSU's regular $49 rate for games like Iowa and Wisconsin? Assuming a half and half distribution between sideline and other seats, FAU would then clear $2.4 million for the game.

Now prices have come down. Most reports mention the fact that they're being sold for $19 a pop. Very few mention that there are thousands of tickets being given away for free.

Even still, most guesses are that this game will feature fields of empty seats. In Detroit. For Michigan State football.

For a school that usually gets less than $500,000 for a home game, $2.4 mil should have been plenty. But it wasn't enough. And now, they won't get nearly that.

Final Four Friday: Neutral Site Games

It’s almost game time for MSU football, which means it’s time to return to a TOSSS tradition of Final Four Friday! Today, we’re looking at the option for MSU to play in an NFL stadium for a “neutral site game”.

Penn State and Indiana have set an example for the rest of the Big Ten, as Indiana moved its 2010 home tie with the Nittany Lions to FedEx Field in Landover, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. There are benefits aplenty for both schools – Penn State getting essentially an extra home game while Indiana hauls in $2 million more in gate receipts – so why can’t Michigan State have a part of that action?

We already know the university would consider it. The MSU-Western game this year was supposed to be held in Detroit at Ford Field, and the Florida Atlantic return game will either be at Ford Field, Chicago’s Soldier Field or Miami’s Land Shark Stadium.

Not counting FAU, here is our Final Four of possible destinations that make sense for both MSU and the opponent.

Soldier Field, Chicago – Illinois

While the Illini may have the occasional good year – and under Ron Zook they’ll get more and more of them – it’s no secret that they can’t sell out their own stadium. Memorial Stadium only seats about 62,000, and at 61,500, Soldier Field is about the same size.

But this time, it would sell out.

MSU’s largest alumni base outside of Michigan is in Chicago, about 20,000 strong. Illinois’ largest alumni base full top is in Chicago. You’d better believe they’d pack every seat in that stadium for what would be the most raucous “home” game the Illini would have all year.

Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis – Indiana

Indiana’s already going to D.C., may as well make the shorter trip to Indy, right? MSU has a great tradition in Indianapolis, including the men’s basketball 2000 national championship and the 2005 women’s team’s run to the Final Four – including the program’s biggest-ever win in the semifinals over Tennessee.

This wouldn’t be as much of a home game for MSU as facing the Illini in Chicago, but the game would definitely sell out. That’s a win-win in my book.

Ford Field, Detroit – Eastern Michigan

The Eagles don’t host MSU until either 2018 or 2020, and you can mark down my prediction right now that this game won’t be played in Rynearson Stadium. Go ahead, mark it down.

For one, that stadium only holds 30,200 fans. For two, well, that stadium only holds 30,200 fans.

There are two other stadiums Eastern could move that game to with no difficulty and guarantee a sellout. One is the Big House in Ann Arbor. The other is Ford Field in Detroit. And I doubt very much that the good folks at Michigan will want an MSU home game in their building.

Ford Field makes sense for the Eagles. A 60,000+ crowd at home would triple – yes, triple – their average attendance. The tickets would be pricier. There are luxury boxes galore that would sell out fast. Do the math and it’s not hard to envision Eastern getting more money out of this one game than the rest of their games combined.

Cowboys Stadium, Dallas – Baylor

OK, so this one might seem like a reach given that we don’t play Baylor, but hear me out.

That is a football team on the rise, a little like Cal and Rutgers were earlier this decade. What they need are marquee opponents willing to do home-and-home deals to really establish themselves in what is a hotbed of football. Enter MSU, a team that historically loves to play that sort of role.

Baylor’s Floyd Casey Stadium seats 50,000. Cowboys Stadium seats 80,000. Waco to Dallas is an hour and a half drive. A big-time opponent like MSU in the Bears’ biggest in-state home base outside Waco is a match made in heaven. Plus, MSU gets a chance to head down to the fertile Texas recruiting base to meet and greet a few 16 and 17-year-old future phenoms. It’d be great.

And the winner is – Soldier Field.

It has been the dream of MSU's long-suffering Chicago alums for far too long. It's time to make it happen.

Ford or Soldier Field?

So it looks like Michigan State will get to play in an NFL stadium after all.

It would have happened this year, but the economy forced Western Michigan to give up its game against MSU at Ford Field in favor of an additional Spartan home game. Now, it appears all-but certain that Sparty will play in an NFL stadium in 2010, as stadium construction delays are forcing Florida Atlantic to move the game.

FAU now is considering three options - two of which would be very conducive for Spartan fans. The Palm Beach Post reported that Ford Field in Detroit and Soldier Field in Chicago are the front-runners, with Land Shark Stadium (home of the Miami Dolphins, a park formerly known as Dolphins, Pro Player and Joe Robbie Stadium) as the backup.

The expectation would be to sell 50,000 tickets in either Chicago or Detroit - while the Florida option would be a last resort that would lose the university money.

I think the smart call here is to go to Detroit. The capacity is only about 60,000, and the Detroit area is home to about 80,000 State alums, as opposed to about 22,000 in Chicago. If you're FAU, a sellout here is a virtual necessity. Either option would work well, and I suspect would draw a good crowd.

But if I'm FAU, and the whole of my athletic department's budget is hinging on turning a profit, I go for the sure thing. That's Detroit.

Nick Saban is Returning to MSU...

... as the head coach of Alabama, when the Crimson tide come to Spartan Stadium in 2017 for the return leg of a home-and-home series. (Scared ya for a sec, didn't I?)

MSU announced three future non-conference opponent deals today, including the Alabama tie. The others are an extension of the Notre Dame rivalry through 2025, with two 2-year breaks (2014-15 and 2020-21). That first break, in 2014-15, will be filled by West Virginia.

This marks a significant upgrade from the future games that had been announced for the next few years. State is scheduled to play Florida Atlantic in 2010 and 2011, South Florida in 2013 and 2017 and the odd date with the three-headed not-quite monster known as "Directional Michigan".

State fans should see right through this. It's a chapter straight out of Tom Izzo's book titled "Play anyone, anywhere." It shows Mark Dantonio's not content to Montana State his way to victory (I'm still pissed about that scheduling decision, by the way). And it shows he won't accept the program being content with beating up on kids when there are giants to fell.

I, like every other State fan, have been praying for nine years that MSU would schedule a Nick Saban-coached team. Finally, we can exact some measure of revenge from him leaving in the dead of night for Baton Rouge and the LSU job. Getting a chance to stomp a mud hole in the lore of the vaunted SEC, right in its most storied stadium, is just icing on the cake.

We've waited this long. What's a few more years? Let's just hope Saban doesn't turn tail and leave before we get our chance.