Syracuse, N.Y. -- Syracuse and Colgate will meet on the basketball court this season for the 171st time. Whether the Orange runs its winning streak to 58 straight matters to the Raiders, but the overriding reason Colgate visits the Carrier Dome for these seasonal humiliations lies in the check SU cuts to play the game.

The neighboring Raiders are one of seven guarantee or buy games the Orange has on its schedule this season. The Syracuse athletic department will pay Colgate, Cornell, Northeastern, Old Dominion, Arkansas State, Buffalo and St. Bonaventure to face the Orange. And while Syracuse, a private institution, does not reveal the dollar amount of those contracts, the public schools it plays are required to provide records of the deals they strike with SU.

The going rate for buy games these days sits somewhere between $80,000 and $90,000, though some schools with massive basketball budgets can offer bigger guarantees and some schools can capitalize on circumstances to drive better bargains.

Syracuse paid North Florida $98,000 to play in the dome during the 2016-17 season, according to public records. SU paid Eastern Michigan, whose coach (Rob Murphy) is a former Syracuse assistant, $100,000 in 2016 and $95,000 in 2017 to play the Orange. It paid Montana State $80,000 to play in the Dome in 2015.

Buffalo, which visited the dome last season and returns to Syracuse this year, redacted the amount it received in the two contracts it provided Syracuse.com, though UB coach Nate Oats said SU paid between $80,000 and $90,000 to host the Bulls.

Syracuse's basketball contract with Eastern Michigan by The Post-Standard on Scribd

Difficult dates, late cancellations by teams originally scheduled to play in the Dome, or the distance teams must travel to Syracuse can factor into the cost of a game, said Kip Wellman, SU's director of basketball operations charged with constructing the Orange schedule.

Colgate coach Matt Langel said his Raiders have been guaranteed as little as $60,000 or $65,000 (Tulane in 2013). Oats said Buffalo has paid as little as $70,000 for buy games, never spent more than $85,000 to bring a team to Buffalo and "won't go anywhere for less than 85."

"The high end is probably $100,000 or $100,000 and change for somebody who's scrambling at the last second," Langel said. "(That's when) something falls through, somebody has an outrageous budget or there's somebody who's doing a favor, a former assistant coach or something like that."

In the hierarchy of college basketball, the Power Five schools write the checks and the mid-majors collect them, though even mid-majors buy games. It's impossible to say precisely how much Syracuse spends each year on these games, but it's a safe bet the Orange will pay opponents more than $500,000 to play in the Dome this year.

Guarantee games are the bedrock of non-conference schedules and essentially provide something for everyone. The Buyer gets to fill its arena and profit from ticket sales, parking and concessions -- all of those revenues eclipsing the amount it pays its opponent to play the game. The Seller gets to fund a large portion of its basketball program and in many instances supplement its entire athletic department while also providing a taste of big-time college athletics to its players.

"For as long as I've been in this business it's been going on," Langel said. "At some point in time it became a business decision: Why should we go on the road and play in front of 2,000 people when we can make however many dollars selling tickets and concessions and playing a home game? So, let's pay to have somebody come here instead of going there."

"Well, yeah, on the basic ground level, that's 100 percent accurate," Wellman said. "That's part of the way we get to the economical standing we have -- by putting people in the Carrier Dome for home games. It doesn't make any sense financially to go to (someplace like) Colgate. In general I'd be shocked if any (of the buy teams) can make $80,000 for one of their home games. They need it as much as we need it. I think that's why it just kind of works."

Wellman will field inquiries about potential 2019-2020 opponents during SU's upcoming season. Some might be cold calls from random programs; others are specific to Upstate New York. Some come from coaching friends of the Syracuse staff.

Because his boss, Jim Boeheim, prefers to consider next season's schedule only after his current season concludes, and because the Carrier Dome is the site for events as varied as high school football and band competitions, Wellman usually begins fitting the scheduling pieces of Syracuse's puzzle later than most programs.

His preference, he said, is to draw from a pool of local programs first. Boeheim has said if he's going to pay teams to play in the Dome, he prefers to spread his largess to neighboring programs like Cornell and Colgate. This year, SU plays both of those mainstays, plus Buffalo and St. Bonaventure.

"I think those teams are good for our fan base," Wellman said. "I think they want to see those games."

The Orange will also play Arkansas State this season. The Red Wolves have a new coach in Mike Balado, a former Louisville assistant familiar to the Syracuse staff. When Wellman considers a team like Arkansas State, Balado's relationship with SU coaches matters, but so too, does the Red Wolves' basketball potential.

The RPI will no longer be used to sort and measure a team's postseason worth, but the NET system now employed by the NCAA still evaluates wins and losses partly on the quality of the opponent. Syracuse will participate in an MTE (multiple team event) this season when it plays in the 2K Classic. That tournament culminates with two games in Madison Square Garden against Connecticut and either Iowa or Oregon, but includes Dome outings against Eastern Washington and Morehead State. Those teams are potential Quadrant 4 opponents that Syracuse had no control over. (The 2K Classic set the field.) So Wellman needed to consider buy games with teams that would help balance Syracuse's schedule.

"I try to find a buy game where the team might be a top 150 or maybe even a 100," he said.

When college basketball teams play in an MTE, it allows them to schedule 31 games instead of the usual 29 the NCAA permits. The makeup of the MTE (how many games are neutral site, how many scheduled for the Dome), helps determine how many games Syracuse needs to buy that season. The MTE, plus any home-and-home series (Georgetown this season) gets "locked in" first, Wellman said, before he turns his attention to buy games.

Colgate head coach Matt Langel calls out to his players in the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Syracuse in Syracuse, N.Y., Friday, Nov. 11, 2016. (AP Photo/Nick Lisi)

Colgate will also play in an MTE this season. It will play buy games against Syracuse, Penn State, South Florida, Pittsburgh and Florida Gulf Coast. And this season, Colgate is itself buying a game -- Monmouth will get paid to visit Cotterell Court.

Colgate relies on internet sites -- basically online bulletin boards like Basketball Travelers -- to frame the non-conference portion of its schedule. Buffalo and Syracuse use the sites to varying degrees. Oats said the Bulls game at Marquette this season happened because the two assistant coaches who work on his schedule saw an online posting and asked Oats whether he'd be interested.

"It's, 'Hey, we need a buy game on Saturday, November whatever,' And then a dozen schools reach out to them. Coaches can go on there and say, 'I need to be bought on this date. It has to be a Friday night because we have a big football game on Saturday and we can't play then,'" Langel said. "One of the things you like to do is try to get your guys close to home. You kind of watch the scheduling wires and you see, OK, UCLA needs a game. Can that fit into our schedule because we've got two guys from California?"

Colgate, a private institution, is not required to publicly produce its basketball contracts, but Langel acknowledged the Raiders will pull in more than $300,000 this season from guaranteed games. At a school like Colgate, which plays in the Patriot League, that represents a significant financial haul. Some of the guarantees, Langel said, can include blocks of hotel rooms, transportation and/or meals to sweeten the deal.

Where does the money go?

"Various schools have various arrangements. Some of it goes to just fund your program. Some of it goes to the athletic department," Langel said. "Some schools, like ours, the institution will say, 'You need to bring in $2 million.' That's from fundraising, guarantee games, ticket revenue, whatever else it is. You need to bring in that amount in addition to what they're giving you to spend from their budget."

"I'm responsible for raising a certain dollar amount every year to help fund our overall athletic budget," Rob Murphy, the Eastern Michigan coach, said in a text message. "It's tough for me/us because in most cases that could be four (buy) losses in the non-conference schedule and not a realistic evaluation of my team as we get prepared for MAC play."

Buffalo coach Nate Oats in the Carrier Dome on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com SYR

Oats is unsure exactly how his athletic department budget works, but he's certain the guaranteed money UB made allowed his team the luxury of taking nine chartered flights last year.

Oats prefers to balance the amount of games his program buys with the times it gets bought each season. This year, the Bulls will be bought by Syracuse, Marquette and West Virginia. They will buy games against St. Francis, Dartmouth, Marist and Le Moyne. They also play a tournament in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

"My first year, we got bought five times and maybe only bought two, which made no sense. That's not an ideal scenario for a team of our caliber," Oats said. "If we're going to be really, really good and thought we could win some, maybe. But a buy game, you're essentially being bought to take a loss. So it's hard to keep your guys' heads together if that's happening five times."

Nobody wants to lose a buy game.

Boeheim, Oats said, approached him after last year's NCAA Tournament and assured him the Bulls would appear on the Orange schedule.

"He basically said if they didn't beat us, they wouldn't have gotten into the NCAA Tournament. We were a Quad 1 win," Oats said. "He said, 'listen, we'll play you pretty much every year.' Which is obviously a good thing for us. I'd like to play them every year. They're really good and Eastern Michigan plays that same kind of zone.

"Here's the thing, too. I don't mind getting bought because I'm never going to be able to get Syracuse, West Virginia, Marquette, Duke. None of those schools are coming to Buffalo to play us. It's just not going to happen. So if I want to play 'em and I can't get into a neutral floor tournament with them, I have to go get bought by 'em. That's it. That's the only way I can play 'em."

Oats wants those teams on his schedule for reasons unrelated to money. They help his RPI. They help lure players to his program. Oats includes a slide in his recruiting power point presentation that details the trips Buffalo has taken. Players, he said, prefer to play against teams they've watched on TV in atmospheres they recognize.

Langel likes to term those situations "experiences." He still remembers the games he played, as a University of Pennsylvania guard, against powerhouse teams like Arizona and Kansas. A 2000 Penn grad, he still remembers the feel of Phog Allen Fieldhouse.

One of his assistant coaches, former Colgate guard Pat Moore, still recalls the time the Raiders played at Duke. The Cameron Crazies were more than just animated faces on a television screen.

"When you get on that stage and that environment, in a place like the Carrier Dome, that's something you're going to carry with you for a long period of your life. When you're 18 or 20 years old, that's an incredible experience," Langel said. "That all plays into what we do. It's not just the revenue."

Langel and Oats worry what might happen to guarantee games when conferences like the ACC add league contests. Next year, ACC teams will play two more conference games. Langel expects other power conferences to follow that model. The lure of additional TV money is too difficult to resist.

He expects Colgate and Cornell to remain on Syracuse's schedule because of the programs' shared history.

"But is Penn State going to play us? There's going to be less games for the 200-some teams that are playing guarantee games and how is that going to work?" he said. "The autonomy schools are going to play each other more often and there's going to be more of the haves and less of the have-nots. The business of the deal will become more and more relevant."

Wellman concedes more league games will impact the way Syracuse schedules. Because those additional league games will be played against quality opponents, it might impact the way Syracuse schedules home-and-home opponents.

"We still have the (home-and-home) ACC-Big Ten Challenge. We take that into consideration," Wellman said. "We have to figure out how many home and homes we want to do, knowing we have a 20-game league schedule. Typically, home and home is going to be an opponent that is maybe a little better than a buy game."

Wellman likes the challenge of piecing together Syracuse's schedule each year. And he understands that at a place like SU, with its iconic Carrier Dome and its consistent college basketball relevance, the Orange wields plenty of bargaining power.

"Being in the scheduling world, you get a glimpse of what other teams are going through," he said. "Not to say ours is easier, but we've kind of got it down to a science. We've had the same coach for 40-plus years, an amazing venue, we're an elite program. It's not hard to find teams to come here to play us vs. other schools, where it might be a little more challenging."