Saturday is SCSU Bulldogs’ payday

Photo: S.C. State offensive linemen, from left, Earl Wilson, Chris Nelson, Derrell Pringle, Travis Ashford and Casey Fortune leave the field during practice Tuesday.

In-state visitors look forward to profiting from their first-ever Gamecocks contest.

GAMECOCKS VS. BULLDOGS
WHO: S.C. State (1-1) at USC (2-0)
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Williams-Brice Stadium
TV: Pay-per-view (Time Warner Cable, (866) 892-2701; DirecTV, (800) 531-5000; Dish Network, (800) 301-3744)
RADIO: WISW-AM 1320, WTCB-FM 106.7
TICKETS: Sold out

ORANGEBURG - ERIC HYMAN is a new favorite son of South Carolina State University athletics. The school might want to consider naming its proposed weight-room and locker-room renovations after the USC athletics director.

It was Hyman who conceived the idea of including S.C. State in a rotation of in-state schools that annually will play football against USC at Williams-Brice Stadium. Wofford, Furman and The Citadel are the others.

After expenses, S.C. State will add approximately $207,000 to its general athletic department budget for playing Saturday’s game, the first between the schools, which are located about 40 miles apart.

S.C. State cleared about $125,000 for its opening game this season at Air Force and expects to make about $250,000 from its second annual Low Country Classic game on Nov. 17 against North Carolina A&T in Charleston. That comes to $582,000 generated from three football games.

“That’s a nice little chunk of it right there,” S.C. State coach Buddy Pough says of his program’s $2 million budget.

Historically black colleges such as S.C. State have long played annual “classic” games at neutral sites as a way to generate revenue for their athletic programs. Grambling and Florida A&M once were the leaders in playing classic games, toting their teams and bands throughout the country.

Classic games began in the 1970s, and S.C. State was quick to jump on board, playing over the years in Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, Indianapolis and Birmingham, Ala.

Then, two years ago, the upper-division programs expanded their schedules to 12 games. Along with the expansion, upper-division schools were allowed to count one win per season against lower-division programs toward being bowl eligible (previously, they were able to count one win every third season).

That was sweet music to Football Championship Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-AA, schools.

“We still entertain classics, but certainly going this direction is beneficial as well,” S.C. State athletics director Charlene Johnson says.

She says S.C. State will continue to play one classic game a season and attempt to schedule one game each year against a Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-A, team. S.C. State opens the 2008 season at Central Florida and is close to a deal to play at Georgia Tech in 2010.

Not long after top-level programs were allowed to play a 12th game each season, USC’s Hyman began charting a strategy for scheduling. USC plays eight games each season against SEC opponents and one against Clemson. Hyman would like to play one other game against a “natural” rival, such as North Carolina, N.C. State or East Carolina.

That left two games, and Hyman did not like the idea of USC playing both against a no-name opponent from Florida or Louisiana, as it has done in the past. Instead, he proposed playing one game each season against an in-state school.

Hyman took the proposal to Steve Spurrier, and the USC coach liked the idea of keeping the guaranteed money to the visiting team in state. Spurrier was so enamored with the idea, he went on Pough’s TV show Sunday to help promote the game.

It helped also that the in-state games are less expensive for USC, which paid Louisiana-Lafayette $475,000 to play in Columbia two weeks ago. All the in-state schools are guaranteed $230,000 by USC, plus 300 complimentary tickets.

Because there is so much interest from S.C. State fans in Saturday’s game, USC modified the contract and granted S.C. State 600 complimentary tickets. After S.C. State quickly sold its allotment of 2,000 tickets, it was given 1,700 more, which also have been sold.

Most contracts for such games do not cover a team’s travel expenses. S.C. State spent approximately $100,000 of its $225,000 guarantee in travel expenses to Air Force. The Bulldogs will stay Friday night in a Columbia hotel and spend $23,000 of the $230,000 guarantee from USC.

Through most of S.C. State’s 100 years of football, segregation prevented it from playing USC. Then there was a time when S.C. State fans believed USC did not want to risk losing to the Bulldogs.

That might have been true during the early 1980s, when USC was going through difficult times and S.C. State was a small-college power. USC lost to Furman in 1982, the same season S.C. State defeated the Paladins in the first round of the Division I-AA playoffs. Two years earlier, S.C. State went 10-1 and sent eight players to the NFL.

Pough admits there exists a much greater disparity in talent today between his team and USC. He says Saturday’s game will give his team a chance to size itself up against a nationally ranked team in front of 70,000-plus fans.

“We’ll bring a little extra income into our family,” Pough says, “and for us, we get the added advantage of the competition factor. The positive for us is to have an opportunity to match up with a team of this sort. You’ve got the chance to play with arguably one of the top maybe 10 to 15 teams in the nation. I think it’s an honor and privilege to be out there with a team such as that.”

That honor and privilege will have worn off by Saturday evening, and by Monday, S.C. State’s athletics department bank account will be much fatter. Eventually, when S.C. State renovates its weight room and locker rooms and puts a new floor in the campus gymnasium, it will have Eric Hyman to thank.