New Mexico State independent status

I just read where NMSU will get $3.9 million in guaranteed money for football as an independent in 2019. Isn’t that about how much the AAC member schools get paid by the TV contract? Might it make sense for us to go independent and play home and home against other independent schools with some road guaranteed games against P5 teams? Or will P5 teams still avoid us?

Is that guaranteed money from body bag games? If so, hopefully we can make that much on our own from attendance, etc, with additional money from tv

They aren’t making any money on their home games with only 5 games averaging 18k this year

$4MM in guaranteed money is nice…especially if you get to schedule 5 or 6 P5s.

A traveling rent a cupcake squad doesn’t sound like a very good way to run a program, even less so if the idea is to win.

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According to finances from 2 years ago, we made about $4M from NCAA/Conference media rights and distributions and another $4M from bowl money. We also made close to $5M from ticket sales.

Consider the following if we go independent:

  • We are already looking at a drop in ticket sales for football next year due to this 7-5 season
  • Independents don’t have bowl tie-ins unless you’re Notre Dame, BYU, or Army
  • Non-Notre Dame independents have no chance at NY6 bowls - Playoffs or bust
  • If we make a bowl, we would take a hit on any tickets that we can’t sell. Right now, the conference covers that cost. So if we end up in Idaho and have to sell 10K tickets, we’re probably eating a healthy chunk of change
  • If the AAC let us keep our other sports in it, we would receive no bowl revenue from them and receive around $250K in media rights annually (what Wichita State is getting) plus whatever NCAA tourney revenue that the conference receives (big deal and why the conference added Wichita State).
  • If the AAC booted us instead, we’d receive even less than that as almost every conference that would invite us makes less in media rights than the AAC and we’d lost that NCAA tourney revenue as the AAC would probably outdo any other conference we would be able to join.
  • The hope would be to schedule enough P5s to help offset the costs, but that would mean scheduling 1-offs on the road or do 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 deals with schools. We could do that now if we wanted to and keep the revenue we make from the conference.
  • No TV coverage guarantee from any network.
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Here is their upcoming schedule(s) with some indications about payments.

The first time they give one of the P5s a real game is when those P5 games will dry up. The big boys are paying for wins not games.

They’re getting $3.8 million in one year - 2019. That is a crazy outlier, because they’re getting $1.7 million to play at Alabama and another $1.5 million to play at Ole Miss.

Usually the guarantees are well south of $1 million.

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guaranteed Total money…you are using just our tv money for us

we get WAY more when you include our ncaa distribution and bowl money…
and nmsu does buy games…we could easily do 4 buy games in ooc gets 4.5 million (not play any in UH) and still get aac checks if it was just about that

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No one would schedule us - not even Tulane, Tulsa, UCF, SDSU, etc. certainly no P5s.

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As Coach Yeoman used to say, “Being independent is hard cheese.” If you suck, you can be every teams homecoming opponent. If you are any good, trying to find someone to play you isn’t very easy. NMSU is in the suck category.

In conference, you are guaranteed so much TV exposure and money. Not so as an independent. Making the NCAA tourney as an independent is extremely difficult. So is getting an opponent during the conference portion of schedules. There really aren’t that many independent FBS teams.

“Hard Cheese” says it all. Going independent is a silly idea no matter how you look at it.

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The only way we should consider independence is if Cincy, directional Floridas, and Memphis get p5 tickets and we don’t. Then when we’re sure no more dominoes will fall we can consider independence because our conference would be trash. Let’s hope that day never comes.