Guarantee games have an interesting history
Can you imagine a college football game between Georgia and Michigan attracting a crowd of less than 60,000 fans?
Well, it happened back in 1965 when the fifth-ranked Bulldogs journeyed to Ann Arbor to play the Wolverines at the “Big House” before an announced crowd of only 59,470. At the time, Michigan Stadium seated more than 100,000, and the week after the Georgia game, they had 103,219 for a matchup against archrival Michigan State.
Georgia and Michigan have played only twice in football, and both times in Ann Arbor. Believe it or not, the Bulldogs played them as guarantee games, receiving a check for the two encounters.
The first meeting came during the 1957 season, with Michigan winning 26-0. Georgia returned the favor in 1965, taking a 15-7 win.
The Michigan-Georgia games were scheduled by athletics director and head football coach Wally Butts and Michigan head coach and athletics director Fritz Crisler, who were both members of the NCAA football rules committee.
Butts and Crisler coached against each other in 1957, but the head coaches in 1965 were Vince Dooley and Bump Elliott.
It would be unheard for Georgia to play a game for money today.
In recent years, Georgia has played home-and-home series against teams from the five power conferences, including Clemson, Oklahoma State and Colorado. But on the other side of the coin, the Bulldogs have had their share of guarantee games as the payor instead of being the payee.
This season, the big checks go to Troy ($900,000) and Charleston Southern ($450,000).
Guarantee usually mean a guaranteed win, but don’t tell that to Michigan and Florida. The Wolverines paid Appalachian State $400,000 in 2007 and lost, and then last season, Florida was victimized by Georgia Southern, which not only got a win but a $450,000 check, too.
The 2007 meeting between Michigan and Appalachian State was when the Mountaineers were member of the FCS Southern Conference. They have moved up to the FBS Sun Belt Conference and played at Michigan again this season and got a check for about $1 million. They lost that game 59-7.
Mercer is already in the guarantee business. The Bears have shelled out checks to Reinhardt and to Ave Maria this year for home games and in 2016 will be on the receiving end when they travel to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech. The checks to Reinhardt and Ave Maria are nowhere near the $300,000 they will receive for playing at Georgia Tech.
Georgia State, in its second season as member of the Sun Belt, played at Washington in September for $900,000 and will travel to Clemson on Nov. 22 for $700,000.
Georgia Southern will take in $2 million in guarantees this season, $750,000 from both N.C. State and Georgia Tech and $500,000 from Navy. In 2015, Georgia will entertain Georgia Southern and pay the Eagles $950,000.
With the four-team college football playoff system going into effect this season, there is a lot of speculation that the five major conferences -- the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 -- will implement standards prohibiting their members from playing schools from FCS conferences. The Big Ten is already making plans to phase out games against FCS opponents.
The primary reason for the move is the strength of schedule component that will be used as part of the criteria to determine the football Final Four.
In a recent ESPN poll of the 65 head coaches in the five power conferences, 30 favored playing only opponents from those conferences, 23 opposed that arrangement, and the remainder were undecided. There are only three schools that have never played an FCS opponent: Notre Dame, Southern Cal and UCLA.
We have already had some interesting matchups this season between the power conferences, such as Alabama-West Virginia, LSU-Wisconsin, Auburn-Kansas State and Michigan State-Oregon, and hopefully those games are just a preview of what is on the horizon in college football.
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com.
This story was originally published November 3, 2014 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Guarantee games have an interesting history ."