Read down in this article on the Huskers to the point where it talks about the 2025 schedule.
Nebraska wanted to get out of an expensive game with Louisiana-Monroe, so they contributed over half of the appearance fee to ULM in return for Northwestern hosting that game. Nebraska will play Houston Christian (formerly Houston Baptist) instead, paying them just $500,000.
Article is behind a paywall, but seems pretty strange.
Our non-conference schedules have gotten weirder and weirder.
First it was just MACrificies then it was FCS Illinois or midwestern schools, and now it is national.
I would prefer going to back to FCS academic schools like Ivy League, and school like Colgate or nearby FCS of which there is 14 in neighboring states.
ULM will bring only parents as they probably have no alums in Chicagoland. Western Illinois probably or even Drake probably have 10 thousand Chicagoland alums. I also think those schools would charge less as it gets them regional exposure and Chicago is a “destination”.
Non-conference games are always sparsely attended at least a little noise would be nice.
I was looking through the list of FCS programs and there are some cool nicknames
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FCS_football_programs
some states have a lot like Louisiana with 5 and others have none like Michigan.
The Ivies are the oldest(program establishment date) of the FCS, but not all in the same year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_programs
For FBS according to this we are the 2nd oldest FBS program after Rutgers.
7 years after Rutgers and 3 years before Michigan.
I’m never sure which LJS articles are available and which are not. (We have a digital subscription so I see them all.) They used to allow a small number of free articles a month, around 10, apparently that’s no longer the policy.
Some other paywall-restricted newspaper sites have given subscribers the ability to gift an article to others, the Washington Post, for example. The Wall Street Journal seems to do that some of the time, I haven’t figured them out, either.
I tried to give the gist of the article, Nebraska is paying ULM $850,000 and Northwestern is paying them $800,000. Nebraska is then paying $500,000 to Houston Christian, resulting in saving them $300,000. (This whole thing starts to remind me of the old puzzle about the bellman and $30.)
Nebraska also convinced Cincinnati to move a game from their stadium to Indianapolis, getting a return game in LIncoln.
Alberts also said Nebraska is trying to set its 3 non-conference games up with 1 ‘marquee’ game, 1 Group-of-5 team and one FCS team as they look at the transition to an 18 team conference. That sounds similar to Tom Osborne’s statement back in the early 90’s that Nebraska was trying to avoid a ‘National Championship caliber game in September’. It’ll be interesting to see if moving to a 12 team playoff structure changes how teams view strength-of-schedule in football.
Two long term predictions: There will be calls for increasing the number of games in the regular season from 12 to 13 or 14. The playoffs will eventually expand to 16.
I have always like the MAC teams for opponents. I used to refer to the MAC as the “Poor Man’s Big 10”.; a mid western based conference but a bit lower on the talent pool. Yet as we all know the conference has been very capable of an upset against NU as well as others With the BT no longer a mid western conference , I have pulled the moniker from my mind
Playing some of the ivies perhaps helps to enhance our academic prestige ; but I don’t think even during our current dark days, we would lose to any of them nor would any opponent likely be competitive ( IMO)
Harry
I suppose with the players compensation increasing from a free ride to a free ride plus NIL , their hours ( ie games to play and practice) May go up too!
Btw my neighbor tells me that the whole team got $10,000 each for some volunteer work with kids Under the rules, volunteering is an acceptable NIL activity. Not sure exactly how many players that covered ; but if was 100 , then that’s $1mm put up by someone or someones
Harry
As I recall, there were some pretty heavy names associated with Northwestern’s NIL cooperative, so $1M probably isn’t all that surprising. I’m just glad to see it spread around rather than most of it going to a few big names who will probably wind up getting even bigger paychecks in the NFL, as happens at the football factories. (And if you believe the rumor mill, it was happening before NIL was legal, too.)
All Utah scholarship players got Dodge Ram trucks
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38575432/utah-utes-football-receive-trucks-nil-partnership
I thought that was posted here, but maybe not.
Hadn’t seen the Utah one before, I hope the players understand they’ll have to pay taxes on those trucks.
A friend of ours won a large sum of money on a game show years ago, she said the IRS was omnipresent during rehearsals and filming.
I’m told that contestants do not get any money they may have won on a game show until the show actually airs. If the show gets bumped for any reason ( eg unscheduled Presidential address) they forfeit any winnings. Surprised me therefore that the IRS would be there during the taping , since they won’t even have a claim against any winners for some time afterwards
Harry
I think they just want to make sure the winners know about their tax liabilities, and ensure the contestants have tax IDs.
If a contestant wins a car, I believe they have to pay the vehicle taxes as well, though sometimes that’s included with the prize (which means they have to pay income tax on that as well.)
I read a story a while back that said on some of the game shows it is not uncommon for a winner to choose not to take some of their non-cash winnings so they don’t have to pay taxes on them.
Remember old Wheel of Fortune where you had to spend your puzzle winnings even if you thought the prizes were atrocious like a stuffed owl or satin painting?
In the picture the wicker basket is definitely not work $56 to me nor even worth the $15 tax obligation.
If you can’t see the image here is a shopping showcase where the “winner” buys a $110 pig statue. Egads!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvNi7wX3S0&t=149s
Saturday is a blackout our first color game I recall. As an 11am I think that makes it silly besides the fact that a “purple haze” sounds so much better.
Our seat neighbor absolutely hates our use of black colors especially gothic.
There’s a story about one of the ‘zonk’ gag prizes on the original Lets Make a Deal being a live exotic animal that it turns out would have cost about $20,000 to buy. (The producers rented it for the filming.)
So that’s where Floyd of Rosedale really came from?
I can attest from personal experience that the IRS is nowhere to be seen on the set of the country’s most popular quiz show, but that the staff is very diligent about making sure you get your W-4 completed and that you understand that you will have to file a California income tax return, even as a non-resident and non-winner.
-Michael