The UVA Football home schedule for the 2025 fall season includes three non-conference games, including two that would be considered “guarantee games” – the “guarantee” referring either to the “guarantee” of money to the opponent just for showing up, or the “guarantee” of victory for the school cutting the check.
Now, of course, it’s smart to note here at the top that “guarantee” games don’t always play out the way you expect when you look at the schedule.
Think: JMU in 2023, Richmond in 2016, William & Mary way back in 2009.
In those cases, the school getting the paycheck also left town with the W.
Best of both worlds for them, lowest of the lows for our side.
ICYMI
The motivation to look into this was, you always hear numbers associated with the payouts for these “guarantee games,” and if you’re me, you don’t necessarily trust what you hear.
(I don’t trust anything anybody tells me. I don’t trust that my birth certificate is 100 percent accurate.)
So, again, me being me, I thought it would be worth it to spend a few bucks with the FOIA folks at the University of Virginia to find out what UVA Athletics is paying Coastal Carolina (Aug. 30 home opener), William & Mary (Sept. 13) and Washington State (Oct. 18, for homecoming).
This FOIA request set me back another $26.70.
They’re nickeling-and-diming me over there.
I also asked for a copy of the contract between UVA and NC State for their non-conference home-and-home in 2025 and 2026.
That one was totally lacking any drama: UVA and State agreed to not pass money back-and-forth for their 2025 and 2026 home-and-home.
For the games that do involve checks, the surprise to me, after reviewing the contracts: not as much money is at play as I’d expected.
We’ll start with Coastal Carolina, which is getting $600,000 for the home opener, which for the folks at Coastal, ain’t bad for a day’s work.
That $600K is roughly 3 percent of their overall annual football budget down there.
The CCU football program broke even in 2023-2024, per numbers from Sportico, so, every dollar they can get in is important.
Next up: W&M is getting $450,000 for its trip to Charlottesville.
That figure comes to about 5 percent of the annual football budget there, so, again, making sure the check clears, important.
Finally: Washington State is getting a mere $300,000 to fly across the continent for our homecoming game.
We’re scheduled to fly back out to Pullman in 2031 for $150,000.
That may be two fellow power-conference schools being more interested in the competition than the money.
In terms of critical analysis, the funny thing here, to me, is the relatively low amount of money that UVA Athletics is guaranteeing to Coastal and W&M.
A quick scan of the Google machine will tell you that the Ohio States and Alabamas of the world routinely shell out seven figures to be able to beat the bejeezus out of Kent State or Samford.
Which is along the lines of what UVA and West Virginia are each getting from the Charlotte Sports Foundation to play each other in 2026 and 2032 in the Queen City.
My story on that has each school getting a $2 million guarantee for each of those games.
With respect to our games with Coastal and W&M, we’re getting a bargain.
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Chris Graham
