How Much a Dollar Cost? A Critique of SWAC Money Game

Money games are contests where two teams schedule each other to the ends of making money at the expense of competition on the field. Most commonly, money games serve to benefit both teams, with one team getting an easy warm-up early in the season, and the other serving as a punching bag in exchange for monetary compensation.
Generally speaking, schools with limited financial resources use these games as a way of bringing in lump sums of money to their university, with an unspoken agreement that they would lose and give the big-name university an early-season victory. While this isn’t always the end result as upsets do occur, the vast majority of such games end with the goal of both teams being met.
For the Southwestern Athletic Conference, these types of contests have served to bolster the finances of their HBCUs for decades, yet the question must be asked: how much is that dollar worth? These finances pay to keep the lights on at some institutions, and yet, it seems to be at the sacrifice of the competitive values that most all sports teams claim to hold dear.
As it was taught to me, integrity is a core value of any sports team, and all coaches that I’ve ever had a chance to speak to would claim integrity to be a core foundation of their programs. This being said, regardless of the motivations behind those who schedule these money games, it’s unlikely that the student-athletes aren’t giving one hundred percent effort for money that they would never see in the first place.
So if it’s not a question of effort or desire from the player’s standpoint, why are money games so ingrained into college athletic programs? Is it just for financial assistance and monetary gain? Simply put, yes.
As previously mentioned, schools that participate in money games are generally lacking the resources needed to compete with larger schools. Depending on the athletics program, these money games are what keep smaller sports teams operational. So while money games may make us question things that shouldn’t be questioned, such as integrity and motivations, money games across the board are a necessity, and they will be until the resources and means of these smaller schools are equal to that of the largest.