Some people say college football has recently turned into a business.
However, the first "guarantee" game for Penn State football can be dated back to 1887 against Dickinson College.
According to Lou Prato's book, "The Penn State Football Encyclopedia," the Nittany Lions paid Dickinson $50 to play at Penn State on Nov. 22 of that year.
Though guarantee games were not common practice then, nearly every college football team participates in them now.
These guarantee games continue to have an effect on Penn State athletics and its opponents.
This coming season, the Lions will face off against Youngstown State, which they last played in 2006, when they paid the Penguins $350,000 to play at Beaver Stadium.
"It is all a balance," Penn State athletic director Tim Curley said. "You want to have a schedule that is fair and challenging to your team, is attractive to your fan base and helps balance the budget.
"That budget not only represents football, but our entire department because we are a self-supporting university."
Yet, for the Penguins, the second time around means a heftier paycheck.
Penn State has never paid a team more than $800,000 for a guarantee game, Curley said, with its usual range somewhere between $200,000 and $800,000.
For Penn State, the amount of money it pays for guarantee games pales in comparison to the total amount of money it makes per game.
According to Curley, depending on whom it plays, Penn State nets between $4-$4.5 million through tickets sold, concessions and parking.
Forbes magazine claims Penn State's football program has a value of $99 million, which is the third-highest value, behind Texas and Notre Dame.
Laying out the season
During a season, that specific amount of revenue grossed during home games has a direct effect on Penn State's sports budget for the entire year.
Curley said this year's budget reached upwards of $95 million, with nearly half coming from football.
The budget supports all 29 Penn State varsity teams, which is the second-highest in the Big Ten, behind Ohio State's 36.
"We are one of the larger schools in regard to the number of sports we sponsor, so we have more bills to pay, and football is the primary revenue source for that," Curley said. "It becomes very important to fill up Beaver Stadium to the overall budget process and other Penn State teams."
Every year, Penn State schedules at least seven home games to create enough revenue to meet the annual budget.
Fewer games would be detrimental to Penn State athletics.
"We need the money from these home games and couldn't do it with just six," said associate athletic director for football Fran Ganter. "We would probably have to cut a sport if we didn't have that seventh game."
While Penn State has bounced around the idea of playing two home games and one away game against the same opponent or playing a home-and-home series, its ability to get seven home games isn't as certain with those options.
Every year, the goal of the Penn State football program is to have seven home games to balance the budget.
Occasionally, Penn State has the luxury of playing eight home games a season, which occurred in 2002 and 2009. However, the flip side is six home games a season, which happened in 2001 and 2004.
The general trend, which was shown in last season's schedule, includes three to four nonconference home games, followed by eight conference games, home or away.
Specific non-match ups with Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) schools -- which in the past five years have included Youngstown State, Eastern Illinois and Coastal Carolina -- have become a bigger deal since 2005.
That year, the NCAA passed legislation allowing Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs the use of one win each year against an FCS opponent for bowl eligibility. The NCAA Board of Directors also voted to add a 12th regular-season game in April that same year, which was implemented during the 2006 season.
"We are expected to play at least one a year and we understand that," Eastern Illinois coach Bob Spoo said Oct. 10, after his team lost to Penn State, 52-3.
"This was it for this year. We go to Iowa next year and Northwestern the year after that, so we anticipate it and hope we can be competitive."
Before 2005, FBS programs were only allowed to count victories against FCS opponents once every four years.
"Guarantee games have increased dramatically over the years," Curley said. "Some of us thought the dollar amount increases would slow down a bit, but we haven't seen that happen. We have seen it increase dramatically."
Both of these new rules meant Penn State would have an easier route to winning six games and becoming bowl eligible while also making more revenue with an extra game at home.
"Having a 6-6 record used to be called mediocrity. Now you are getting rewarded for having a .500 record," Prato said. "It's ridiculous.
"Joe Paterno went 5-5 in his first season as Penn State's head coach and people were calling for him to be fired."
Penn State's perspective
While Penn State sees guarantee games as a benefit to its athletic department, many of its opponents feel the same way.
It is obvious the teams coming in see a financial benefit to playing Penn State. However, the gains go beyond their pocketbooks.
"All of the regional and national publicity in playing a Penn State is great for our school," Youngstown State athletic director Ron Strollo said. "Our student-athletes also enjoy playing games at Penn State, and it helps with our recruiting in the state."
For many of the athletes at schools such as Youngstown State, Akron and Kent State, the trip to Happy Valley is within hours from their hometowns, enhancing the trip for them.
At Akron, the Zips play in front of 31,000 fans. Yet when they make the trek to Happy Valley, they play in front of as many as 107,282 people. This can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the student athletes from these teams.
"It's obviously a fantastic environment for our student athletes," Akron athletic director Steve Wistrcill said. "Many like Penn State a lot because they are from Pennsylvania. It's a memorable experience for them."
Even though it is a fun game for the opposing schools, coaches and players alike understand the situation they've been put into.
After Penn State's 52-3 trouncing over Eastern Illinois on Oct. 10, Spoo said his players understood the circumstances and that they got their "fannies kicked" but were resilient enough to look ahead to conference play and not dwell on the loss.
"We know it's a difficult game to win, but we know Penn State won't embarrass us either," Wistrcill said. "We know it's not a death march."
The teams also understand the difficult game will provide lasting effects to their programs.
Youngstown State coach Eric Wolford, who will coach his first collegiate game Sept. 4 against Penn State, says playing at Beaver Stadium helps with recruiting throughout Pennsylvania and other surrounding states.
The trip to State College also allows the teams to receive exposure they wouldn't normally gain while playing at home or against other conference opponents, thanks to the amount of Penn State games televised by ESPN, ABC and the Big Ten Network.
"It gives them good exposure because most times we will be on television," Curley said.
"So if you are a school like Akron or Kent State, you can be on national television or the Big Ten Network, which is in 43 million homes.
"From a recruiting standpoint, that is great, as opposed to playing someone where they will not be guaranteed to play on television."
For Penn State, it is also appealing to bring in such schools because of the close proximity to central Pennsylvania, Curley said. Since the opposing schools are in nearby states, it is easy for them to get to Penn State on a bus rather than a plane, which would be more costly.
Wolford, who helps determine Youngstown State's schedule, said the team looks to play schools in a five-hour radius because it cuts down on travel costs.
This also allows opposing teams to build a stronger fanbase at Beaver Stadium.
The geographically close teams are ideal to Penn State because the expenses incurred total less than that of a school farther away. That in turn means Penn State has the potential to hand out a smaller paycheck to the visiting school.
"The proximity for us is a really good fit," Wistrcill said of Akron. "It's a good place to play and it allows our fans to make the trip."
Along with these benefits, the monetary compensation goes a long way in these various athletic programs.
Trevor Parks, the sports information director of football at Youngstown State, said the money provided by Penn State as well as other BCS schools can go toward improving facilities, scholarships and enhancing training tools.
Strollo added one of his primary focuses since becoming athletic director in 2001 has been to improve the facilities on Youngstown State's campus. Guarantee games help him accomplish that goal.
As is the case with Penn State being a self-supporting university, schools like Youngstown State and Akron rely on the football programs' guarantee games to provide for the rest of the athletic programs and budget.
Currently, Akron's guarantee games help provide the funding of 19 varsity athletic teams. Youngstown State's provide for 16.
"When it comes to our budget, every dollar from football goes into our general funds," Wistrcill said.
For these schools, they have to draw a line dividing where guarantee games can help them and hurt them.
Spoo said his team would have to play a nearly perfect game to even contend with the Lions, and Wolford said the cards are stacked against Youngstown State but understands one game doesn't define its season.
When it comes to scheduling, many of these schools said their teams understand it is both a money and competition factor that needs to be taken into consideration.
"We have to be careful with our scheduling," Strollo said. "We don't want to hurt ourselves, but we have to pay the bills."
A business of the future?
Even though the 2010 football season is six months away, Ganter is already filling spots as far in advance as the 2018 season for Penn State.
While planning a schedule eight years ahead may sound excessive, that is what Ganter's job has come to.
Having to find spots for both guarantee and marquee games -- games that will be the highlight for the nonconference season -- can prove to be a challenging task.
This upcoming season, Penn State's marquee nonconference game will feature Alabama, the defending national champion.
However, the Lions' marquee nonconference game in 2009 was against Syracuse. When scheduled six or seven years ago, the Orange were a top-notch team, but over time its stature dwindled.
"There is a danger in scheduling so far in advance," Ganter said. "There's a fine line in the competition."
On the other side of the spectrum, guarantee games can take months to finalize, with aspects such as television contracts and bartering between various teams.
Most recently, Ganter has been dealing with the Miami Hurricanes for the past four months, trying to negotiate compensation for the re-airing of a potential game.
While Miami may be a worthy opponent now, it is always a worry for Ganter and Curley that it, like many other opponents, won't be as competitive if and when the game is played.
"The BCS side has added an interesting dynamic," Curley said. "FCS schools are attractive from a scheduling standpoint, but then you have strength of schedule as well. It's a juggling act."
Another point of frustration for Ganter that sometimes leaves him on the phone for hours a day is the back-and-forth talks between Penn State and other schools in deciding guaranteed contracts.
Ganter said an FCS school will call Penn State to receive its offering price. The school will then call other prospects and see if they would be willing to pay more. The process can be repeated multiple times before a resolution is met.
But Ganter can find some comfort in Akron because Wistrcill was an athletic administrator at Minnesota and Wisconsin for eight years.
Wistrcill and Curley keep in close contact and have had conversations about the Zips coming to Happy Valley every few seasons.
Akron's scheduling ties with Penn State remind Prato of a time nearly 50 years ago when teams would only schedule two or three years in advance.
"It's always been a business. It's just bigger now," Prato said. "I'm sure Joe Paterno would've never thought it would get this far and would now be this cutthroat. It's really built up to an arms race."
Forming a competitive schedule proved an even tougher feat for Penn State before it began competing in the Big Ten Conference in 1993.
Curley, who had Ganter's job of scheduling while the Lions were an independent, said it became challenging to put together a schedule for the eight weeks of the season when other conference-affiliated teams were playing.
"As independent it becomes challenging to stay that way, which is one reason why we ended up with a conference affiliation," Curley said.
"We could see that it was going to be hard to put a football schedule together."
However, no matter the conference or division a team is in, the business aspect of college football is prevalent.
Guarantee games are not unique just to the BCS schools. FCS teams such as Youngstown State will pay even smaller schools to compete in their stadium, Strollo said. These schools have included Austin Peay, Butler and Valparaiso.
These games, along with guarantee games for Youngstown State and the schools it plays, create revenue for athletic programs and help the economy of local communities, Wolford said.
He sees these guarantee games for Penn State as a way to take advantage of an influx of people during football weekends, when a profit for the community can occur.
"We need the money to help pay bills, and it really helps all the schools we pay," Wolford said. "A negative thought about these guarantee games would be crazy."
With all of these aspects considered, Akron believes in one main goal when deciding future games.
"It is very much a business, and you don't really know where it will end," Wistrcill said. "We have to remember that there is a difference in professional football and college football.
"We still have to be focused most on our student athletes."
With both the benefits and downfalls at hand, it has been a question as to how long this practice can continue.
Prato, a Penn State football historian, said he has no idea what the future holds for Penn State and its guarantee games.
Others believe that it is a byproduct of the economy and market at the time.
"When it comes to how much teams are willing to pay, it will go as far as the market lets it go and what it will then be worth for a home game," Strollo said. "It is all about supply and demand, leverage and realizing things in time cost more."
