For Second Straight Year, NIU Loses Money On Bowl Trip

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Mar 29, 2010 5:20PM

The Northern Illinois University Huskies football team has made a bowl game the past two seasons but the trips are proving costly as the team has actually lost over $425,000 total on the trips. According to Huskie Wire (via TBL), the Daily Chronicle's NIU site, the team lost $154,125 on their trip to the 2008 Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana and then lost $271,152 on this season's trip to Toronto for the International Bowl. While the school received a $200,000 payout for playing in the bowl, they only sold 960 tickets, generating a little less than $30,000 in ticket revenue. NIU Athletic Director Jeff Compher told the Huskie Wire, “I think the date affected people, too. I don’t think people were expecting that. Even though we put it out there as a possibility, I think people were banking on the other December games as more likely destinations. A lot of people didn’t have passports and couldn’t go, or had plans for New Year’s that wouldn’t allow them go either.”

While the cost of the trip was covered by "internal athletic department funds" and didn't affect the school's overall budget, the cost is still coming under some scrutiny given the state's budget crisis which includes hundreds of millions of dollars owed to state universities; NIU is currently owed $60 million by the state. The Huskie Wire has a full breakdown of the trip's cost.