With the final trickle of 2024 college football schedule releases hitting the internet, the upcoming HBCU football roadmap is now clear, and it’s time to hunker down for winter and break down all the details of your team’s upcoming season, and that means checking out the payouts for this year’s money games.
One of the hottest topics in HBCU football scheduling is the practice of having guaranteed payout games on your schedule.
Also known as “money games,” guaranteed payout games are ones that take a smaller HBCU/FCS school on the road to face a larger FBS/Power 5 conference opponent for an agreed-upon amount of money.
For the smaller school, these games are often double-digit losses on the scoreboard accompanied by a six-figure win for the program bank account.
PHOTO GALLERY: SOUTHERN VS LSU 2022
Deion Sanders famously said “All money ain’t good money” about the impact of big losses in money games during his tenure at Jackson State, we’ve also seen longtime HBCU coaches like Buddy Pough of South Carolina State talk about using these games to get the funds necessary to keep up with the business side of NCAA college football.
COACH PRIME ON MONEY GAMES
Recently, Sam Herder of Hero Sports compiled a list of the payouts from nearly 70 FCS vs. FBS games on the 2024 schedule, so we parsed through the full list of FCS schools to see what type of paydays our HBCU football programs are in for in 2024.
2024 HBCU vs Power 5 Money Game Payouts
Florida A&M at Miami – $700,000
Alabama A&M at Auburn – $525,000
Morgan State at Ohio – $425,000
Jackson State at ULM – $350,000
Norfolk State at East Carolina – $350,000
SC State at Georgia Southern – $337,500
Alabama State at UAB – $330,000
Bethune-Cookman at Western Michigan – $325,000
North Carolina A&T at Wake Forest – $325,000
This is a running list. More games will be added as we gather more payout figures.