Hlas: Hawks, Warhawks clash for cash

Saturday's feature attraction in Iowa City might as well be called “Moneyball.”

Iowa gets a home football game against Louisiana Monroe that it should win. Most BCS conference teams have a couple of these a year. They help the programs get the seven home games a year they need for the juice to run their programs and pay their millionaire coaches.

As a nice side benefit, these games help teams toward bowl-eligibility in case they drop five or six games in league play. Even though bowl games don't make money for most teams.

But these nonconference games are golden. ULM gets $1.05 million for its visit today. That money helps sustain the Warhawks. As does the $1.3 million ULM got three weeks ago for being the 34-0 victims of Florida State in Tallahassee.

This is college football. When you're a big boy like Iowa, you set your schedule the way you want it. When you're a ULM, you travel wherever you can get a nice payday before your league play begins. You are often overmatched, but you do what you must to get by. Like real life.

None of this is anything new for ULM. Ever since it moved up to I-A status in 1994, the Warhawks have hit the road to play in large stadiums and take large beatings.

Since the BCS was born in 1998, ULM has played 36 times against teams from BCS conferences. It won one, at Alabama in 2007. Its average margin of defeat has been five touchdowns, though the Warhawks have closed the gap recently. They gave TCU a good game last week before falling, 38-17, and could be formidable today against the Hawkeyes.

“Usually, we've had four nonconference games,” ULM Athletic Director Bobby Staub said this week from Monroe. “We've scheduled an FCS team to play here, and we've had three games on the road against teams that didn't require a return trip to our campus from us. There's a financial aspect. It's what many FBS programs have to do.

“It's also an exposure piece, a recruiting piece. They're opportunities that kids love to play”

ULM will cut that down to two such Moneyball games per year. It has a home-and-home series lined up with Baylor that opens with a game in Monroe next year. Like any program, it would rather play bigger boys at home from time to time.

But when the Warhawks play at Arkansas and Auburn next year and at Oklahoma in 2013, it's all about the Benjamins.

Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan all play at Big Ten schools today. If any of them wins, it's a big upset. But the money they'll receive will buy nice things.

Yes, Western Michigan did win at Iowa in 2007. Yes, Toledo won at Michigan in 2008. But anticipation is as much fun as the games themselves, and no one in Big Ten country gets too fired up for a game against a Mid-America Conference team that has fewer financial resources to become a football power.

The Pittsburgh-Iowa matchup last week that produced some really good September excitement on the field? It's part of an endangered nonconference species.

From 2012 through 2017, five MAC teams will come to Kinnick. North Texas, an FBS bottom-feeder, will play here twice. And, FCS teams are on the home schedule every year from 2012 through 2016.

Now it's Louisiana Monroe and a football matchup that was assembled for one reason. It starts with an “M” and rhymes with “honey.”

“On any given Saturday you never know,” ULM's Staub said.

Louisiana Monroe vs. Iowa. Two teams from different regions that have never met and aren't slated to meet again. Thrilling, huh?

But the Warhawks did get that win over Alabama ...