Residents of Nebraska have NOTHING else to follow. No professional teams. No other state universities. Nothing.
And last year, the stadium may have been sold out, but by the middle of the season no one was going to the games.
Nebraska has the money to pay off a bad contract. Hell, all they need to do is reach out to a deep pocket donor and it's paid off. We have nothing comparable.
My brother is a pastor out in Lincoln: he and I talk weekly. He went to Texas A&M and Colorado for school, and is a Michigan fan (don't ask). And his wife is from Alabama. So he's had exposure to a lot of different aspects of college football. He talks about how people fly in from the western part of the state for the weekend and blow a thousand bucks a night, how every hotel is full, how the economy is dependent upon Nebraska football. Last year was terrible, people weren't coming into town for the games and a lot of businesses were hurting. He told me about a friend of his who manages a hotel suites place, forget the name of it, and how they were running around 40% vacancy on a game weekend, which was unheard of.