North Dakota State will pay the University of North Alabama 230 thousand dollars for making the trip from Florence, Alabama to Fargo this weekend. UNA will gladly take the check and the charter trip as experience for what they hope is a successful transition from Division 2 to FCS. That paycheck may seem like it’s high when you think about it, since UNA is brand new to Division 1, but when you’re NDSU and need home games, the Lions had the advantage in negotiating power.
I’ve compiled the amounts NDSU has paid to get non-conference games at the Fargodome over the last six seasons and the next two seasons upcoming. There are a couple teams not on this list, Montana, Eastern Washington, Weber State and Delaware, those games are straight home and homes, with no money exchanging.
- Prairie View A&M (2012) – 200 K
- Delaware State (2013) – 200 K
- Ferris State (2013) – 180 K
- The Incarnate Word (2014) – 190 K
- North Dakota (2015) – 125 K
- Charleston Southern (2016) – 300 K (highest paid game to date)
- Mississippi Valley State (2017) – 240 K
- Robert Morris (2017) – 185 K
- Cal Poly (2018) – 250 K
- North Alabama (2018) – 230 K
- Butler (2019) – 185 K (Twins are now paying this, NDSU getting at least 600K based on attendance at Target Field)
- North Dakota (2019) – 140 K
- UC Davis (2019) – 240 K
- Drake (2020) – 230 K
Total payouts for non-conference games since 2012: 2.71 million dollars