Notre Dame football vs. Tennessee State: How big is the Payout?
The Notre Dame football team will be taking on its first FCS and HBCU team, Tennessee State, and here is how big the payout is.
Notre Dame football made news when it announced that the Irish football team would be playing its first-ever FCS and first-ever HBCU school, Tennessee State. This drew mixed reactions from Notre Dame fans, some of whom were upset to see the Irish play any FCS school, while others were somewhere between nonplussed and excited.
No matter your personal feelings, this game is a huge deal for both schools. So much so that they had a press conference, in which Jerome Bettis crashed to joke with Tennessee State coach Eddie George. Also, during that same press conference, Jack Swarbrick joked that Tennessee State had negotiated a bigger payout than Notre Dame had budgeted.
In response, George joked back, “Y’all are doing well around here,” and that it, “Would be a drop in the bucket.”
While the comments were played for laughs during the press conference, Eddie George is not wrong, relatively speaking. Sure, Swarbrick does have a budget that he needs to keep, but the Irish have a lot more money flowing into the program than any FCS program, especially an HBCU.
Now, most fans hate pay games, because they’re not competitive events. That makes them boring to watch. When UMass heads to Texas A&M in 2022, no one is leaping up in joy. However, the game is important because UMass needs the money for its program to survive. This is true of all pay games, and it’s actually why they’re both incredibly important and never going to go away completely. Tennessee State, having resource difficulty by its nature, needs the money as much as anyone.
Notre Dame football to pay out $1 million
In the end, that payout will be $1 million.
That’s $1 million going into Tennessee State athletics to pay for facilities, coaches, trainers, travel, and everything else. It’s a big deal, and it’s reason enough to celebrate that this game is happening. That’s before you consider that an HBCU is going to get to play on NBC, another huge deal in terms of access and visibility.
The game is set to be played on September 2, 2023. It will be that season’s home opener, coming one week after the Irish are set to take on Navy in Dublin. This travel, mixed with going up against the triple option, is likely why getting this game scheduled where it was scheduled was important to Notre Dame.
On top of that, it allows an HBCU to travel to South Bend and play a national game. For Irish fans, this will be a great chance to expose themselves to one of college football’s most unique corners, the world of historically black colleges and universities. Just remember not to leave your seat at halftime.