Oregon football kicks off in under three weeks, and its first opponent, Nicholls State, will be getting paid a healthy sum of money to come into Autzen Stadium and take on the Ducks. According to an article in The Register-Guard by Emerald editor-in-chief Sam Stites, the Colonels will be paid $450,000 when they roll into Eugene on August 31.

This will be the second year in a row a Pac-12 school from Oregon has paid Nicholls State to play against them during the opening week. Oregon State paid the Colonels $400,000 in 2012, although the two teams didn’t actually get to square off on September 1 like they scheduled. Hurricane Isaac prevented Nicholls State (located in Thibodaux, LA) from traveling to Corvallis in week 1, and they didn’t re-schedule the make-up game until three months after the originally intended date. In retrospect, the Colonels might have preferred simply canceling the game considering how they ended up performing against the Beavers: OSU won 77-3.

Craig Pintens, the University of Oregon’s Senior Associate Athletic Director, told The Register-Guard it’s merely a coincidence that both OSU and UO have scheduled Nicholls State in back-to-back years.

“We want to continue to schedule one major conference opponent each season, and two other nonconference opponents,” Pintens said. “College football scheduling is very difficult, as there are a number of variables such as availability, willingness to play one of the top teams in college football, and cost.”

The figure Oregon is paying Nicholls is less than half of what they gave to their week 1 opponent last year. That opponent, Arkansas State, received $950,000 to play the Ducks. Another 2012 opponent, Tennessee Tech, was paid $500,000. The Ducks beat both teams by a combined score of 120-48.