Alabama football: Utah State getting absurd payout for Week 1 visit

Alabama football hosts a Group of Five team in Tuscaloosa for a Week 1 matchup. How much will Utah State earn from playing the Tide?

The Alabama football team hosts Utah State, a Group of Five team from the Mountain West Conference, during Week 1 of college football.

Utah State had a spectacular 2021 season and finished the season ranked No. 24 in the final AP Poll. They look to replicate that success in 2022 with the help of Head Coach Blake Anderson and returning quarterback Logan Bonner.

However, even a team that was ranked in the Top 25 last season and won their bowl game is not beneath scheduling a payout game.

Utah State will reportedly receive $1.91 million to travel to Tuscaloosa and face the No. 1 ranked team in the country in Week 1 of the 2022 college football season.

That figure is one of the largest payouts in the history of college football. Only Colorado State ($2 million from Florida) and Tulane ($1.93 million from Auburn) have received bigger payouts than Utah State.

These sort of games, sometimes called “guarantee games,” can be vitally important for smaller schools that have minuscule athletic budgets. The games are essentially designed for established and wealthy Power Five schools to have an easy, tune-up game with no travel.

In exchange for coming into town and getting whooped, the bigger school will pay a handsome fee to the smaller school to help ease the pain, inconvenience and (likely) embarrassment from getting trounced by a team with far superior athletes and facilities.

There’s no shame in playing these games, even if it’s a game in which you’re expected to get beat and beaten badly (many sportsbooks have Alabama defeating Utah State by around 40 points). The nearly $2 million payout from Alabama will be a huge boost to Utah State.

For the fiscal year ending in 2019, their athletic department revenue was $38.7 million and their expenses were $39.1 million, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

In other words, this payout game will cover about five percent of their entire athletic budget, which will help fund all athletics at Utah State, not just football.

“It’s a necessary evil,” Anderson said of so-called payout games. “We’ve got an athletic department that we’ve got to fund, and this is something that we have got to do,” he said according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The Alabama football team is not the only program participating in a guarantee game in Week 1. Michigan, Tennessee, UCLA and Washington are just a few of the big-name teams who will do the same.

Here, you can find additional payout data for the opening week of college football guarantee games, per Tom Layberger of Forbes:

• $1.8 million – Michigan payout to Colorado State (Sept. 3)
• $1.8 million – Washington payout to Kent State (Sept. 3)
• $1.5 million – Tennessee payout to Ball State (Sept. 1)
• $1.15 million – UCLA payout to Bowling Green (Sept. 3)

Even though these types of games are not very fun for the Group of Five team, they do get some exposure on national TV, their athletic department gets a substantial boost and they get to compete against some of the very best talent in the country, even if it’s just for one game.

The fun part, however, is when one of these smaller schools gets paid hundreds of thousands (or sometimes millions) to come into a Power Five school’s home stadium and then upsets them.

It’s rare that it happens, but always something to keep an eye on during the first couple of weeks of the college football season when most of these payout games are typically scheduled.

No. 1 Alabama looks to avoid a historic upset when they host Utah State Sept. 3 at 7:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.