If all goes as planned, Ford Field in Detroit, the home of the Mid-American Conference Championship, will host not only the Ohio University football team, but a crowd of crazed Bobcat fans as well.
Ohio Athletics has subsidized funding for six charter buses that will depart for the Motor City today. Three will be headed north from Athens, while a pair will depart from Columbus and one will load up in Lancaster.
According to Ohio senior associate athletic director for external operations, Dan Hauser, the buses hold approximately 50 passengers each and are being rented from an external source.
The pricing of each bus' round trip varies depending on distance, driver and location, among other things, Houser said. Therefor, the buses leaving from the state's capital cost less than the ones departing from Athens.
Students are being charged $10 for the trip, while other fans will incur a $20 cost.
If the breakdown of students and fans were a 50-50 split, approximately $4,500 would be brought in from the trip. However, the cost of the buses themselves is projected to outnumber the sales.
The hope is that the championship game will be able to attract a significantly higher draw than last year's contest between Northern Illinois and Miami, which brought in an official attendance of only 12,031. Ford Field's normal football capacity is 65,000.
Ohio's last two visits to the conference final, 2009 and 2006 losses to Central Michigan, gathered a combined nearly 50,000 fans, officially.
