This is one reason why the Bison get to host the first round:

"NDSU submitted a bid of $100,000 to the NCAA, which is $70,000 more than the required minimum. Taylor said the school needs to sell about 9,000 tickets to reach the NCAA bid. Host teams are not selected until the entire playoff field is set, O’Day said."

It's a lot of money, but hey, North Dakota State will easily sell 9000 tickets by Mon. afternoon. When I saw the statistic that Robert Morris had a total home attendance figure of 13000+, I thought, "Hey, not bad." Then I noticed it was TOTAL home attendance, not AVERAGE home attendance. With 5 home games, that's less than 2800/game. If Robert Morris made a bid, they wouldn't be able to afford much more than the minimum of $30,000.

http://www.inforum.com/event/article.../group/Sports/