Playing in the Southwestern Athletic Conference within the FCS simply was not going to prepare the Southern Jaguars for Saturday's expected onslaught vs. 22nd-ranked Houston. As Southern coach Marshall Faulk put it following his team's embarrassing 77-6 loss, there's no need to disguise what amounts to a paid-for beatdown. "That wasn't really a game, that was kind of a preseason crash-dummy test for Houston to work on all the good plays," Faulk said.
According to The Houston Chronicle, Southern received a $450,000 guarantee for the game, 125 pizzas as a postgame meal for players and 400 complimentary tickets with the option to purchase 1,000 more. Buy games in college football are common and help facilitate revenue for the FCS team, but it certainly waters down the competition. Over the first two weeks of the season, nearly every preseason top-25 team has played an inferior opponent from the FCS ranks as a ramp-up of sorts before starting the conference slate.
Most of those matchups need not be under the guise of expected competitiveness, however. We're FCS, everybody knows what this is, let it be what it is," Faulk said. Kentucky State, man We can't dig ourselves a whole like that'd expect to play good football or be in a game like this.
They've got a really nice budget. "I was literally standing on the sideline thinking to myself, back when let's say Southern had juniors and seniors ... this could be a competitive game playing a team like Houston. In today's landscape, we don't have the budget to compete against them.
We just don't." #Southern head coach Marshall Faulk kept it real following the 77-6 loss to No. 22 Houston. Not only on his team's performance but "money games" and the challenges in general. Full postgames presser below. @WAFB pic.twitter.com/mPQGK2WsN0 Looking at several Power Four vs.
FCS matchups thus far, outcomes have been painful for those receiving the check. Outside of the Power Four, even JMU and first-year coach Billy Napier got into the glorified scrimmage action in Week 2 after clobbering Wagner during a record-setting 87-3 win. During Saturday's loss at Houston, Faulk and the Jaguars agreed to a shortened eight-minute fourth quarter after falling behind 70-0 after three.
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