Pitt would do anything it could to secure a win for its football team – even pay for one…. Pitt would do anything it could to secure a win for its football team – even pay for one.

The Panthers, along with other National Collegiate Athletic Association teams, such as the West Virginia Mountaineers, reached into their pockets this season to play an opponent from an inferior division in what is known as a “guarantee game.”

In such games, the smaller schools receive a guaranteed payment from the larger school to travel to their stadiums. Prices for the games vary, depending mostly on the projected attendance for the matchup.

Dishing out large amounts of money to play a smaller school, however, is nothing new to the powerhouses of NCAA football.

But a motion passed on April 29, 2005, by the NCAA board of directors, which added a 12th game to each team’s schedule for the 2006 season, has made it more widely accepted.

In the 2006 season, 86 of the 119 Division I-A schools will play at least one lower-division team. For the larger schools, it’s all about getting one more victory. For the small schools, however, it’s about the guaranteed money and a lot more.

“Any young man that comes to The Citadel wants to play the best competition they can,” said Les Robinson, athletic director at The Citadel, a school that played two such games in 2006. “They aren’t going to these big schools, so the next best thing is to get to play them.”

The University of Buffalo, an annual bottom feeder of Division I-A, backed out of earlier contracts with West Virginia and Rutgers because two other schools – Auburn and Wisconsin – offered more money.

With the open date on the schedule, West Virginia turned to Eastern Washington – a Division I-AA team out of the Big Sky Conference – and paid it $450,000 for a game that resulted in a 52-3 win.

Pitt, meanwhile, paid The Citadel, a men’s military college in South Carolina, $350,000 to visit Heinz Field for a game against the Panthers earlier this season. The Citadel also played Texas A’M for its first game with a payment of $400,000.

“That’s not a new phenomenon,” Pitt athletics director Jeff Long said. “Guarantee games, as we call them in the industry, have been standard for a long, long time. That’s how we can manage our schedule.”

“That is not unusual.”

Managing the schedule means a lot to Pitt financially. Pitt’s game against The Citadel this season helped allow the Panthers to schedule seven home games, something Long described as “a significant boost to our program.”

A home game for the Panthers, according to Long, generates roughly $1.3 million.

“That’s something we’ll try to do every year with our program,” he said. “Having seven games is financially important.”

Matthew Bolks, a junior at Pitt and three-year season-ticket holder, understands the bigger picture.

“If you look at any figure regarding any big program, $350,000 doesn’t seem that outrageous,” he said. “And when it comes to bowl games, when every victory counts, the cost of that victory will be well worth it.”

“There are millions of dollars in bowl games for just getting to one. You don’t even have to win.”

A team must win at least six of its games before it can be considered for a bowl game. A win over a lower-division opponent used to count only once every four years. Now, the NCAA board of directors says a win over a Division I-AA opponent counts toward a Division I-A team’s bowl eligibility.

In the case of a Division I-A team, one more win could propel it into a payoff in a bowl game or an even larger jackpot – around $12 million – for a berth in one of the four Bowl Championship Series games – the Rose, Sugar, Orange or Fiesta bowl.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Long said. “Some people look at the schedule and think we should play a BCS conference school every game, but it doesn’t work like that.

“Our goal is to win the Big East conference and play a balanced schedule that prepares us to win the Big East conference.”

But nothing is guaranteed in the games, except for the money. Montana State and Richmond both upset Division I-A teams in the first week of this season.

“Yeah, if you lose it looks really bad, but the likelihood of losing to a team like that is relatively low,” Bolks said. “It’s a safe risk to chance one loss to a terrible opponent than to go .500 with a schedule of teams that are worthy opponents.”

The players of the big school put a lot at risk in these games, ending up in what is considered a “trap” game – a game you are expected and supposed to win, but holds some heavy consequences if you lose.

Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, one of the Panthers’ senior leaders, made sure a loss wouldn’t happen to his team.

“We can’t control who we play,” Palko said after Pitt’s win over The Citadel. “No matter who it is, they are coming out to try and beat us so we need to be on top of our game. They did a lot of things well to try and slow us down.”

Leading up all week to The Citadel game, Pitt’s players were reminded of two years ago when the Panthers needed overtime to beat Division I-AA Furman, 41-38.

In The Citadel’s two guaranteed money games in 2006, it lost by a total score of 86-9, leaving some fans to question Robinson as to whether or not the embarrassment is worth it.

“If the coach handles those games right, we can become a better team because of them,” Robinson said. “We get back in our league and we’re in good shape. Our next game after the Pitt game, we played our best half of football all season.”

Robinson said games against Division I-A opponents are tune-ups for when The Citadel plays a team in its conference. He compared it to a baseball player warming up with a heavier bat before stepping into the batter’s box.

Robinson doesn’t see any negatives for his school in these games, considering each positive far outweighs anything else. And in the unlikelihood of a win, it’s just that much better for The Citadel, or any other small school.

“You can grow from a loss like that,” he said. “It’s a win-win situation. And two out of every 10 of those types of games, we’ll win. It does happen.

“And when it does, that’s the greatest reward.”