Indiana sells a 2010 Big Ten home football game for $3 million

Even within BCS conferences, the gap between the haves and the haves-not-as-much is obvious, and getting more so all the time.

Indiana is moving a 2010 home football game against Penn State from Bloomington, Ind. to FedEx Field in suburban Washington, D.C.

Indiana is required to sell only 7,000 tickets for the game in the 91,000-seat stadium. Penn State, which is only 215 miles from Washington, has gobs of fans in that area.

The Bloomington Herald Times reported that the Washington Redskins contacted Indiana about moving the game for for a payout of about $3 million. That's over triple what the Hoosiers make for a typical home game.

So there you have it. Indiana gets the cash and Penn State gets what, basically, is one more home game than everyone else in the Big Ten next year. And two more than Indiana.

The Hoosiers get the cash. But getting a game in Washington is a big, big payoff for Penn State, too.

Here's guessing a crowd of, oh, 91,000 people floods FedEx for that game. It will probably be a Penn State whiteout on the "road."

Enjoy your home game, Hoosiers. Spend that money on recruiting, telling kids they can play for a program that is willing to give up games in Bloomington for money and make playing a team of Penn State's caliber even harder than it already was.

So how will Indiana sell 7,000 tickets to a regular-season game that's 640 miles from Bloomington?

That's easy. Penn State fans will buy them.

This story broke this morning, but the fallout is predictably harsh. Here are some early returns from Blog Ten: