Now, Savannah State can make another claim — not that anyone here would — that the first two games on its schedule constitute perhaps the highest degree of difficulty ever for a team at the start of a season. Oklahoma State won the Big 12 last season, and Florida State is projected to win the Atlantic Coast Conference and contend for the national title this season.

The Web site Beyond the Bets, which has projected point spreads for the 798 games involving at least one Football Bowl Subdivision team this regular season, listed Savannah State as a 52-point underdog in its opener and a 56 ½-point underdog to Florida State. There was only one other game in the country this season in which the projected spread exceeded 50 points.

For the Tigers, these are hunger games.

Payments from Oklahoma State and Florida State will total $860,000, which represents about 17 percent of the Tigers’ modest athletic budget.

“They don’t call them money games for nothing,” said Coach Steve Davenport, who supported the scheduling decision by Athletic Director Sterling Steward.

Despite his team’s struggles, Davenport, in his second year, remains at least outwardly confident. In the annual poll of coaches and sports information directors of the 11-team Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, his first-place vote went to the Tigers. That was even though they are coming off a 1-10 season that included losses by scores of 63-6, 41-6, 47-7, 45-3 and 59-3, in addition to a defeat at the hands of a team that had lost 29 conference games in a row. Most other voters listed Savannah State no higher than 10th.

“I can’t ask my guys to follow me if I don’t step up for them,” Davenport said. He also picked the Tigers to win the conference last season and said he would continue to do so.

“If they want that vote to change,” he said, “they’ll have to take our vote away.”

Savannah State became a Division I program in 2002, but a lack of a conference affiliation hampered scheduling and recruiting for years. Financing for the program was so meager that barely half the current number of scholarships (63) were awarded some years. The Tigers have 88 players on the roster this season.