“The numbers just didn’t make sense for us,” said Arkansas-Pine Bluff athletic director Skip Perkins. “We were better off staying at home and playing someone then to go all the way somewhere else when we weren’t making anymore money.”
When Perkins was hired at UAPB in 2007 a game against New Mexico State in Las Cruces, N.M., had already been scheduled. He said the payout from New Mexico State was $210,000, but expenses that included travel and lodging took up most of that sum.
“At the end of the day, we didn’t even take home half of that,” Perkins said. “That didn’t make any sense to me.”
Since Perkins has been in control of scheduling, he has stuck to a strict policy that he won’t agree to play a game against an FBS school for less than $300,000. And though no rule has been officially set, Sharp said conference athletic directors have set an “unwritten rule” on a minimum dollar amount for such games to avoid conference schools bidding against each other with the same schools.
“That’s a negative that we really don’t need,” Sharp said. “I think the A.D.’s have done a good job of saying ‘Here are the criteria that we all need to go by.’”
Perkins, who serves as a liaison between conference athletic directors and its football coaches, said when the athletic directors voted on the issue on the final day of the SWAC meetings June 5 in Birmingham, Ala., he didn’t prefer one system over the other. He still feels that way, but can say a nine-game schedule allows for a more definitive conference champion.
“I think it’s more true this way,” Perkins said. “We’re only playing for, really, one prize, that prestigious, coveted SWAC Championship. So at the end of the day why shouldn’t all 10 schools play each other?”
Perkins, who said he’s “pretty sure” he voted earlier this month to move back to the nine-game schedule, likes the system also because it still allows for playing a paid game. With two nonconference slots he can still envision playing an FBS school the first week of the season and another against an in-state Division II school. The rest of the schedule will be made up of familiar conference foes that fans enjoy watching.
I know precisely what PV is going to do, so we're going to make a MAJOR profit (closer to 200,000$): <b>739.74 miles, 11hrs 11mins</b> travel time by car (hitting 10 just west of Austin). Las Cruces is 45mins from El Paso airport and is closer to PV than Alabama A&M University, distance wise. 3 coach buses, we're rolling.
