Nebraska football fans are set to take over Kansas City, turning Arrowhead Stadium into one Big Red Kingdom for the Huskers’ season opener.
Nebraska Athletic Director Troy Dannen said Thursday, at the first installment in this year’s Big Red Brunch series, that around 66,000 tickets have been sold for Nebraska vs. Cincinnati on Aug. 28 at the home of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Originally scheduled to be played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, it’s still a designated home game for the Bearcats.
Dannen said analytics estimate some 6,000 tickets were bought by Cincinnati fans.
“It’s turned into a home game,” Dannen said, smiling.
Nebraska’s second-year athletic director said the opener, a late-Thursday kickoff more than three hours from Lincoln, will generate roughly $1 million toward revenue sharing, one of many topics Dannen discussed during an hourlong conversation over bacon and eggs at Tiburon Golf Club.
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Along with everyone else, Dannen and the Huskers will spend this year assessing the lay of the land. The revenue-sharing era of college athletics is in its infancy; it’s equally foreign to every school in the country.
But it’s a process that NU has had in place.
Dannen met with all of Nebraska’s coaches around this time a year ago and asked what they realistically needed to remain or become competitive. NU tiered its sports to split $20.5 million — the cap for Year 1 of revenue sharing that the Huskers fully intend to distribute. Football, volleyball and both basketball programs were at the top.
Each program got a number from Dannen, and from there, it was the coach’s job to decide how that was divvied up among their roster.
Similar to splitting scholarships back in the day.
“I’ve actually been surprised by how much we’ve distributed,” Dannen said. “I thought we would give more to fewer. We’ve given fewer to more.”
Money is the motive for most things nowadays. It has to be to compete with the Ohio States and Michigans of the world. The days of name, image and likeness made that crystal clear.
“It was essentially pay for play; we called it NIL. That can’t happen anymore,” Dannen said, citing the newly-implemented College Sports Commission clearinghouse, created to legitimize third-party NIL deals of at least $600. “Collectives accumulating money and paying kids is done.”
There’s a plan, Dannen said, for the next steps in renovating Memorial Stadium.
But he doesn’t know when he’ll present it to the Board of Regents after Nebraska Chancellor Rodney Bennett announced Monday that NU will cut $27.5 million from its budget by the end of the calendar year.
Dannen doesn’t want to present the renovation plans with money tight elsewhere.
He said his job, above all, is to protect the financial model. The athletic department pays its scholarships, and even kicks back a $5 million subsidy every year. Dannen doesn’t want, nor plans, to dip into academic funding to be competitive.
“I love sports. I love athletics,” Dannen said. “But if we try to be the tail that wags the dog, it’ll bite us.”
Any projects moving forward will be crucial.
Dannen said some of the original structure at Memorial Stadium, built in 1923, is still under some of what’s there now. Whatever Nebraska does to one of the most prestigious venues in college football, Dannen said, has to last two generations.
That’s why he wants to maximize NU’s resources — so, for example, the Huskers don’t have to raise ticket prices to all events.
Dannen wants to use Memorial Stadium and the Devaney Center for more than the relatively few times they’re used throughout the year. That might be a smaller concert, or a marquee boxing match featuring Bud Crawford, an Omaha legend with whom Dannen stays in touch.
Nebraska’s AD understands the apprehension around hosting other events on Big Red grounds isn’t part of the school’s rich, longstanding traditions.
In this era, what worked then doesn’t now.
“We have to find other ways to generate revenue,” Dannen said.
That includes the dicey decision to prohibit re-entry into Memorial Stadium for the first time.
Part of that, Dannen said, is because of the revenue Nebraska will bring in from concession stands. Fans can no longer leave the stadium, eat and drink at their cars during halftime, then re-enter for the second half.
Dannen said the change will annually generate $5 million in revenue from alcohol sales, new to Memorial Stadium starting this fall.
But no re-entry is largely because of safety.
“The stuff we did would mortify you,” Dannen said. “Or the stuff we didn’t do.”
He said last season NU captured a weapon, before it ever got into Memorial Stadium, with some of the newly implemented screening technology. Dannen estimated 110 officers are on hand for every game — “and we probably need 150,” he said.
All of that costs money.
Everything does.
“The fuse that starts winning is resources.”
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