MARSHALL PAYING SOUTHEAST $120,000

Southeast Missouri State University's football Indians will be heavy underdogs Thursday night when they begin the Tim Billings era with a game at Division I-A powerhouse Marshall.

But no matter what happens in the season-opening contest in Huntington, W.Va., Southeast's athletic department will be coming out ahead -- at least financially.

Marshall will be paying Southeast $120,000 to take on the Thundering Herd, who went 13-0 last season. Contests of this nature, when a Division I-AA team plays at a I-A squad, are commonly referred to as "guarantee games," meaning the visiting team receives a guaranteed amount of money in return for what the home squad expects to be an easy victory.

Southeast athletic director Don Kaverman said the $120,000 will be used in different ways to support the athletic department.

"$50,000 will go to support the (planned) renovations of Houck Stadium. A portion will be used to address the expenses of the trip and the rest of it is just budgeted revenue for the athletic department," he said.

The only other time Southeast played a I-A program in the modern history of Southeast football was in 1994, when the Indians traveled to Hawaii and suffered a 34-0 loss to the Rainbows. That season, ironically, marked Southeast's last winning record, a 7-5 mark.

Kaverman said Southeast will attempt to play one game per season against a I-A program. The school could probably receive a larger guaranteed sum by playing a team from one of the nation's elite conferences -- like the Big 12, Big 10 or Southeastern -- but Kaverman said he would rather stick with a league similar to the Mid-American Conference, of which Marshall is a member.

"There's an opportunity to play some even larger I-A programs, but essentially we're looking to play MAC schools," he said. "Maybe down the road we might play a Conference USA team or a Mountain West Conference team, if that presents itself.

"I think playing one game a year like this is a good tool to be able to generate some revenue for the athletic department. And it allows our student athletes to compete against a program that is perceived to be several notches above us and see how we stack up."

Many other I-AA programs across the country play at least one I-A opponent per season in order to generate revenue. In the Ohio Valley Conference, of which Southeast is a member, Eastern Illinois, Tennessee Tech and Eastern Kentucky all have a I-A team on their schedule this year. Eastern Illinois and Tennessee Tech are playing Mid-American Conference squads Toledo and Ohio, respectively, while Eastern Kentucky is taking on independent Central Florida.

Kaverman said that playing one I-A team per season -- those games are always on the road -- makes it unlikely that Southeast will ever have more than five home contests a year. But, other than this season, the Indians should never have less than five home games. Southeast has only four home games this year because it dropped Division II Truman State in order to play Marshall.

"We would have had five home games this year but we dropped Truman State, who we're going to play in basketball instead, in order to take advantage of this opportunity," Kaverman said. "Other than this year, we'll never play less than five home games."