JSU Men’s Basketball set to host first home game of the season

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - It’s been two months since the Jackson State Tigers Men’s Basketball team played a home game inside of the Athletic and Assembly Center.

The team is coming off a 14-game road trip in which they played some of the country’s best teams in Alabama, Texas Tech, Indiana, and Michigan.

Every year, in college sports across the country, larger universities like the aforementioned teams will schedule games against smaller-level schools known as “buy games.”

Buy games allow smaller schools like JSU to be paid in exchange for playing in what fans of a larger program would consider an easy win.

This helps the smaller school’s program and other athletics and organizations receive proper funding.

“Like our roll into just making funds for the school is big because you know we’re out playing 14 games, playing big games on the road to fund other equipment and other sports that are at the campus,” said Tigers Forward Jamarcus Jones. “So, it’s our responsibility to bring in the funds.”

JSU Class of 1974 alum and Senator Sollie Norwood says even with all the buy games JSU has had to play, they still don’t generate as much revenue as they could with different scheduling.

“It’s not worth it,” said Senator Norwood. “I think that we have to do a better job from the conference standpoint to put our schools in better positions to generate revenue to support. I mean basketball and football are your traditional revenue-generating sports.”

Out of the 14 games the Tigers played on the road, over half of them were buy games, and Senator Norwood says if they can get alumni influence in the picture, the amount of buy games could greatly decrease.

“If we participate more in helping them to make their budget, then that would hopefully negate some of these extremely harsh road trips that they have to take to try to make money to support the program,” said Senator Norwood.

He believes one solution in order to achieve the necessary funds could be bringing one or two big schools to JSU each season to advertise big-game home tickets.

The Tigers will make their long-awaited entrance to the AAC Saturday night at 5:00 where they’ll host the Alabama State Hornets.

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