IN THE first two games of the season the Savannah State Tigers conceded a total of 139 points to Oklahoma State and Florida State, two college-football powerhouses, without scoring a single point itself. Its offense was outgained by a staggering 925 yards. This mismatch may have been particularly egregious, but similar “cupcake” contests are common before the gruelling schedule against perennial conference rivals begins. The Tigers aren't throwing games. But from their perspective, being legitimately chastened by a top-calibre team is too lucrative to pass up. Host institutions make up for their embarrassing supremacy on the scoreboard by paying opponents hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the trip. The payouts can cover much of the cost of fielding a football team. In 2010 the 118 institutions participating in college football’s top division—the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly Division 1—spent on average $13m each on players, coaches’ salaries and other expenses. This year Savannah State, which plays one division below the FBS, in the in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), pocketed $860,000 from its two FBS opponents. This is relatively small change to the likes of Florida State and Oklahoma State, which rake in over $30m a year (half of this goes to the team; the rest props up the school's other athletic budgets). But it is two-thirds of the $1.3m Savannah State spent on the Tigers in 2010, and 17% of the college's total athletics budget for 2012. And Savannah State's athletic director, Sterling Steward Jr, was hardly alone in making his team a laughingstock in exchange for a large cheque or two. In 57 other games over the first two weekends of the season an FCS side made the trip to face off against an FBS one. FBS teams won 48 of them. But why do teams from the six so-called “power conferences”, which are home to almost all of the sport’s best sides and which have inked generous television contracts in recent years, splurge on such seemingly pointless extravagance? One reason has to do with the rule set by the NCAA, college football's governing body, requiring that an FBC team win six regular-season games (out of twelve) to qualify for a post-season "bowl", an extra game that is essentially a (rather well) paid exhibition. Teams can count a win against an FCS opponent towards the six-win minimum. As a result, paying a poor FCS squad to get walloped can earn a middling FBC team rich returns from the bowl.

As important, maximising the number of home games is critical to many teams' bottom-lines—and the financial health of their parent athletic departments. Many still make as much or more money from ticket sales for the six or seven home games they play every season. In 2010 the median FBC team earned about $10m from ticket and concession sales. For the best teams, which can expect to win more than six games anyway, the reason for indulging in cupcake contests is driven purely by ticket sales, from which the Ohio State University, the University of Michigan and Pennsylvania State University, all of whom play in front of more than 100,000 fans at home, earn around four times the FBC average.

All this has led to a situation where teams in less strong FBC groupings like the Mid-America Conference (MAC) now charge $725,000 to visit an FBC team from a major conference. That has prompted even the stronger teams, such as Florida State, to look further down the division tables for the likes of Savannah State, which are cheap by comparison. However, MAC's middling teams, like Western Michigan, say, now have to pay more to schedule its cupcake games because opponents' ask has gone up, too. For the league's Western Michigans profit margins are razor thin, if non-existent; any increase in the cost of fielding a football team takes it into the red.

Meanwhile, willing opponents from the lower divisions are getting dearer by the season. A few years ago it would have cost an FBC team about $60,000 to get the FCS's Eastern Illinois to take a beating. But the price for humiliation has risen to $350,000. If it keeps on climbing the silly season may be priced out of existence.