No sellout, but IU football meets obligations in DC

Miserable, monsoon-like conditions for Monday’s Philadelphia road blowout of the home Washington Redskins brought 84,912 fans to FedExField.

Don’t expect that many for Saturday’s game at the Landover, Md., stadium, though forecasts are sublime for the time of year with sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s expected.

In the team’s first regular season neutral site game since 2000, IU (4-6, 0-6) plays Penn State (6-4, 3-3) at FedExField just outside of the nation’s capital.

“I think the Redskins felt like (ticket sales were) a little lower than they had originally hoped,” IU Athletics Director Fred Glass said Wednesday.

The game is being promoted by Redskins Special Events and is part of a series of other college football games being played at FedexField this season. Glass said the latest he heard, from “a few weeks ago,” pegged attendance of about 50,000.

Redskins officials indicate, however, that ticket sales have improved since that conversation. Adam Shuman, a client services representative with the Redskins, said the company is expecting a crowd of more than 70,000.

“Frankly, I have mixed feelings about that,” Glass said. “On the one hand, you’d love to play in a big time atmosphere. It’s the biggest stadium in the NFL. If it was full that’d be great. On the other hand, I understand that if it’s going to be full, it’s going to be full of Penn State people.”

Glass said IU has met all of its contractual requirements.

“Our allocation that we’re expected to sell as a part of the agreement is 7,000 tickets,” Glass said. “We negotiated pretty heavily with the Redskins to make sure they were premium tickets. Those are all but sold. I’m confident that before Saturday we’ll have 7,000 sold out, which is good news for us because it fulfills our contractual obligation.”

Redskins Special Events originally wanted IU to sell 12,000 seats, but Glass negotiated that down, he said.

IU was guaranteed $3 million as a part of moving the game — one originally scheduled to be played in Bloomington — to the Washington, D.C. area. In return, Glass secured October’s Homecoming matchup with Arkansas State to fill the vacated home game’s slot.

The money won’t just be dropped into the athletics department operating budget. Instead, Glass said, it was mostly designated to fund the recently completed Academic Resource Center for student athletes at Memorial Stadium.

“Essentially we’ve assigned that money to the build-out of the academic center,” Glass said. “It’s not like it’s just going in to our operations budget. I don’t think that would be a good thing to do with something extraordinary like this.”

On the field, the game may as well be the 10-year anniversary of the last time IU played a regular season game at a neutral venue. The contest — also against Penn State on Oct. 28, 2000 — saw the Hoosiers fall 27-24 at the Indianapolis’ RCA Dome.
IU has yet to beat Penn State.

“It’s a different kind of trip, and going to D.C., staying downtown, going out to the stadium, I know our guys are excited for it,” IU coach Bill Lynch said.

Penn State coach Joe Paterno, the coach since 1966, wasn’t too worried about the game’s location when asked about it during his weekly press conference.

“I was told that they were going to move the game to Washington, D.C. and I said to myself, probably, ‘Hey, I wonder why they are doing it,’ but I have not bothered to ask them,” Paterno said. “There’s nothing I can do about it. As I’ve said many times to you guys, I don’t really worry about anything I can’t do anything about."

“If they want to play in Indiana, it’s their prerogative. And if they want to play in Washington, that’s their prerogative.”