Arkansas State Athletic Director Terry Mohajir has made scheduling football games one of his top priorities since being hired last fall.
“We discuss it daily,” he said.
Those discussions are taking the Red Wolves out West for a game against Southern California to open the 2015 season.
ASU announced Wednesday that it will play USC on Sept. 5, 2015, at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The Red Wolves also will get a record payout as part of the deal. USC, winners of 11 national titles, will pay ASU $1.3 million for the lone date,which surpasses the previous high of $1.1 million the Red Wolves will receive for playing Auburn this year.
“It’s a top-five brand game,” Mohajir said. “Not only that, it’s on one of the largest media stages in the world. We’re going ‘Howlywood.’ ”
USC went 7-6 under Coach Lane Kiffin last year while serving the final year of heavy NCAA sanctions for violations committed under former coach Pete Carroll.
It will mark the first meeting between the two schools, and it marks the first time USC will play a current member of the Sun Belt Conference.
It is the second nonconference game ASU has announced for the 2015 season. The Red Wolves will play host to Missouri on Sept, 12, 2015, which will mark the first time an SEC member has visited Jonesboro since 2001. ASU still has two nonconference dates that need to be filled for the 2015 season, and no games have been officially announced for 2014.
Mohajir said last month that ASU will play at Tennessee in 2014 and that a potential home-and-home series with Miami was being discussed. He said Wednesday that a potential series with Miami is “still a possibility.”
Mohajir said scheduling is a grueling process that he and his staff work on every day.
“We’re calling everywhere,” he said. “Scheduling is one of the hardest things to do.”
Still, Wednesday’s announcement can be counted as a victory. ASU will play a big-name opponent, and even though the Trojans weren’t willing to play a game in Jonesboro, they met ASU’s asking price.
Mohajir has said he doesn’t want to schedule nonconference road games for less than $1 million, and he always asks for a return game.
“We say it confidently,” Mohajir said. “Not like, ‘Hey would you mind coming back here?’ No. We say it like, ‘We’d like to do a home-and home.’ … It’s with extreme confidence that we ask for a return game.”
It worked with the Missouri game scheduled for2015, and although it didn’t with USC, Mohajir said “we were able to drive our market value up.”
That’s a strategy ASU will use with all of its scheduling negotiations while following what Mohajir calls a “four pronged” philosophy. The USC game met two of them, he said, by helping ASU’s budget and helping to build “a national brand.” The other two aspects involve expanding ASU’s season-ticket base and creating a competitive advantage.
“We’re going to place an emphasis on scheduling,” Mohajir said. “That means we value it. When it comes to football, men’s and women’s basketball, we make those calls.
“We have to. It’s harder for our school to schedule. We have to be on top of our game every single day.”
Sports, Pages 17 on 06/27/2013