Indiana University has found a way to bring in some extra cash next football season -- not by increasing prices for tickets or merchandise but by selling an actual game.

By moving a 2010 home game against Penn State to FedEx Field in Landover, Md., Indiana has compromised the spirit of college football. The Hoosiers are not a premier football power, but the thought of taking a game out of easy reach for many Indiana fans is a troubling one.

The financial reasoning behind the move is sensible on the Hoosiers' part. Indiana typically makes about $1 million per home game at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, but the Redskins, who typically occupy the stadium, will pay the school three times that amount for the contest. Thanks to the large Penn State presence in the area, the game will effectively mean Indiana will play road games against the Nittany Lions in three consecutive years. This move is a slap in the face to Indiana football fans by their own program.

Indiana athletic director Fred Glass has said the move was made largely due to the financial boon it would provide his department. The Hoosiers are also looking to the game as a way to get name recognition in the Washington metro area, but local recruits would be given little incentive to play for the Hoosiers when watching a game loaded with fans wearing blue and white.

While the move is a good one for Indiana's pockets, it sets a dangerous precedent for other schools. Many football programs in major conferences play neutral-site out-of-conference games. But the fact that a Big Ten team has chosen to move a home conference game to a neutral site -- outside of the conference's traditional boundaries but inside the reach of Penn State's vast fan network -- simply for a paycheck is a disservice to fans in Bloomington who want to see one of the conference's best teams come to town.

The long trip to FedEx Field -- Bloomington sits 640 miles from Landover, more than three times farther away than Happy Valley -- blocks out thousands of Hoosiers fans who could easily drive to the game and encourages Penn State fans to load up their RVs to make the four-hour trip.

The wise financial decision made by the Hoosiers athletic department comes with the risk of creating a trend of smaller-budget schools selling out to finance themselves. In this case, the compromised integrity of collegiate athletics and Indiana's own program outweighs the benefit of additional funding for the department.