The Nicholls’ Athletic Department received nearly one million dollars for the football team to compete against the University of Oregon, Western Michigan University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) allows Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools to play one Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) opponent each year to count toward the win-loss record. The difference between these schools is simply size. Smaller schools like Nicholls get paychecks for playing the bigger schools like Oregon. Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs Brandon Ruttley said, “Our support from the state has dwindled every year, so we have to play more guaranteed games. We would like to play just one, but because of the finances we have to play two or three.”    
The total purse for Nicholls Athletics from just those three games is 965 thousand dollars, which equates to 15 percent of the total budget for athletics. All the money generated from these “money games” goes toward athletics as a whole, not just the football program. Oregon was the most expensive payoff at 450 thousand dollars, Western Michigan gave Nicholls 380 thousand dollars and ULL gave 135 thousand dollars for a two-hour trip. In addition, Nicholls was able to come out of Western Michigan with a win.
Ruttley said, “Not only is it a revenue booster, but it is also an exposure booster. Sometimes it isn’t just about the money. When you play outside of Division I, you do not get the opportunity to play major programs around the country. My hope is that someone goes on the Nicholls State website and sees Nursing or Culinary or another premiere program, and someone in Chicago or LA says, ‘I want to go to Nicholls.’ When you play and beat bigger schools, you will see an increase in enrollment.”
Appalachian State beat Michigan in rank in 2007, and the next year the university saw an 18 percent increase in enrollment. The Nicholls State University webpage saw a 918 percent increase in traffic the day of the Oregon game. The official web page for Nicholls Athletics saw an increase of traffic by 3,125 percent as well.
“I really think athletics is an avenue for marketing. I think if we get to a point where we are properly funded and win some games, nationally people would recognize Nicholls. People will immediately look at the score, but they don’t see the 350 yards of offense and almost 20,000 hits to our website. It isn’t just about the money, there are other aspects to it,” Ruttley said.
College football is starting to see conference realignments by moving teams around to try to begin making super conferences. The Big 10 conference has already come out and said that they will not be scheduling FCS schools in the future.
Nicholls Athletics Director of Ticket Operations Tyler Knowles said, “I hope it never comes to that because it would ruin college athletics as a whole. It is getting so much to where it is just about getting money with paying players and all of that talk.”
The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) has already said they will keep playing FCS schools, but hypothetically if conferences did completely go away from it, there is still confidence inside of Nicholls athletics.
“I think we would find other revenue streams. Every time we get cut, we find other ways for revenue. Basketball would bring in money playing bigger schools,” Ruttley said.  
College football is different from other sports because of the divide with FCS and FBS. These are simply two subdivisions for Division I. There tends to be more parity in college sports outside of college football. It is more common to see smaller schools defeat the bigger schools in sports like baseball and basketball. Last year, Nicholls baseball team won series against San José State, Tulane and ULL.
Head baseball coach Seth Thibodeaux said, “We like to think that we can compete on any level. When you watch teams like Stony Brook make it to Omaha, it definitely adds fuel to the fire and helps us understand it is wide open in baseball.”
In baseball, every team gets 11.7 scholarships and a maximum of 27 players on partial scholarships. Even though conference realignments in football would not change the complexion of baseball much, it could impact the athletic department as a whole because of the revenue that would come in.
With the athletic department relying heavily on that 965 thousand dollars from those first three games, many people still wonder if some FCS schools would even have an athletic program without those games. Nicholls wide receiver coach Justin Anderson said, “I think it is a good question. I really don’t know, but I think a lot of the FCS programs make enough to keep athletics going.”