NIU's ticket allotment

Sometimes information like this can get buried, and it was at the bottom of today's Iowa-NIU at Soldier Field story. But this could be a big deal for bowl expenses for NIU.

In a change from years past that might make a major impact on expenses, Northern Illinois will not have to buy its allotment of tickets for this year's International Bowl. Whatever amount of revenue NIU can generate from selling its 10,000 ticket allotment, it gets to keep. That revenue will be used to help defray other bowl expenses.

For last year's Independence Bowl, NIU had to buy a 12,000 ticket allotment, which cost $420,620. It was allowed to keep the revenue from tickets sold, which ended up being about 2,000. That resulted in $38,880 for the school but didn't do a lot to alleviate the expense of the tickets it had to buy first.