(12-17-2016 05:02 AM)owl40 Wrote:  Every year there is at least one game on the schedule that is about $$. 2017 had none. At Pitt and at Houston don't bring any material $. Army at home does not bring $ and obviously no C-USA games do.
For Stanford, best case you put 15K butts-in-seats if it were at HRS. There is some marginal national interest, TV interest, etc. but not sure it translates into attendance #'s given the lack of big alumni base in H-Town and Rice coming off a bad year. So this game is not anywhere in the zipcode of financially benefiting Rice like A&M, Texas, Baylor, etc.
Not just incoming $ from the Aussie sponsors via tickets, but given this is the only game on TV, first game of College Football, Aussie angle, etc., the TV rights now have materially more interest. I am curious if Rice was able to negotiate with C-USA for some extra love. The incremental value that Rice is bringing back to C-USA for this one-time event in enormous as this could bring more national/international TV viewers than all the other C-USA TV games combined.
JK was staring at some big deficits year-over-year in his budget calculations, probably less donor $, etc. and needed to do something big and creative to solve it and he did. Going hat-in-hand to the BoT to cover a higher budget deficit for the decline in revenues is probably not a good move for an upwardly mobile guy so he needed other solutions.
JK gets some big props here making lemonade from lemons.

Absolutely.

You say it nicer than I do. Then again, you've only got about half as many years dealing with the frustration as I do.