Originally Posted by
Professor Chaos
I understand where you're coming from that it would be better to have a higher quality opponent but for this first go around with this type of neutral site game I don't think the opponent matters a whole lot. I think it's the location and the novelty of the event itself that are more important for ticket sales than the opponent. If they try this again, especially at Target Field, I would guess they're going to need a better opponent to sell the same amount of tickets or more than they did for this one.
In the long-term it may be a shrewd business move to schedule a team like Butler for this first game. You open the eyes on the draw that the Bison have in the twin cities, since Butler will account for 1% or less of the tickets sold, so others *ahem* US BANK STADIUM *ahem* take notice and with someone like Butler you don't have to share much of "the pie" with the opponent. I'm pretty sure NDSU is getting a cut of the ticket sales and are going to be getting an FBS level pay-day out of this game from the Twins. Had they played this game at the Fargodome it would probably be the cheapest ticket on the schedule and they'd make the least amount of money of any home game on it.
In that case the next time you do it then you can justify the cost for a bigger name OOC opponent (I doubt they'd ever do this for a conference game since it would take away a home game from the Fargodome) which will draw in more people who are underwhelmed by Butler and, if the event itself is a success, the word of mouth between the fan base will have that Frisco/Gameday effect where #2 draws even better crowds than #1 did.
Based on the number of tickets sold I would guess something like this will happen again.