The right price for getting Navy to come is a modest price

I can see covering Navy’s costs to come to South Bend and maybe paying them another quarter-to-half million on top of that.

I can’t see paying multiple millions to get Navy to come in lieu of giving up a future home game. As it is, most of the rest of the P5 will only be playing ten games, so an 11th game this season shouldn’t be regarded as an entitlement. We certainly shouldn’t spend several million dollars to obtain an 11th game.

Giving up a ‘21 home game to get Navy to come to Rock’s House this year wouldn’t be terribly different to having Toledo — hey, it’s a short drive — offer to come play in our empty stadium this year in exchange for moving our home game next year to the Glass Bowl or Cleveland. We wouldn’t even consider that. Of course, there’s far more history to the Navy series .....

I believe that some of the P5 conferences have given up their home-weighted non-conference schedules so willingly more because they don’t want to pay “buy-game” guarantees in empty stadia than out of putting health concerns and consistent protocols first-and-foremost.