It’s not a Bowl Championship Series conference school, but apparently CMU supporters don’t mind.

Central Michigan will open its 2008 home campaign Thursday night against Eastern Illinois. While EIU doesn’t have the stature of some of the recent opponents in CMU home openers such as Boston College and Indiana, fans are still purchasing tickets.

“We are in the middle of ticket sales for this event and our pace for sales for the game is around 14,000 to 15,000 to date,” said Kim Hudson, manager of tickets and promotions at CMU. “Usually, the next 10 days are our largest ticket sale days of the year as students return to campus. We anticipate between 18,000 to 24,000 in attendance.”

But many of those seats are likely not a result of fans’ intrigue in EIU. Hudson said season tickets sales are up 30 percent since last season, indicating that fans are more excited to see the two-time defending Mid-American Conference champions than their weekly opponents.

Hudson said her optimistic outlook on the remainder of the days leading up to the season opener is based on previous successes the CMU ticket office has had on Thursday-night games before Labor Day.

“Usually the weather and atmosphere on campus during the first week of the year make for a great football environment,” she said.

While CMU’s recent success is advantageous for the ticket office, Athletic Director Dave Heeke said it has had an adverse effect on his ability to bring more prestigious schools to Kelly/Shorts Stadium.

“With the success of our team you might think, ‘We’ve got to play bigger-name schools – why don’t we upgrade our schedule?’” Heeke said. “The more success we have, the more challenging it is to schedule people. They’re worried about their competitive balance of schedule. So our success on the field sometimes is challenging in the schedule area.”

Heeke said he has gotten around such issues by offering “two-for-ones” to some schools, where CMU would go to a certain venue twice and that team would come to Mount Pleasant once.

As the moment, Indiana is scheduled as CMU’s next Bowl Championship Series home opponent. The Hoosiers are currently scheduled to come to Mount Pleasant in 2010.

It is an NCAA Division I Bowl-Subdivison requirement that each team has five home games. That requirement, coupled with the recent change to a mandatory 12-game schedule, has made scheduling what was previously known as Division I-AA schools a popular trend.

“Because of those extra games, we need more teams, in a sense, to play,” Heeke said.

The money a home team gives to lure CMU to a venue makes it more profitable for CMU to play on the road, Heeke said.

“A home game at Central produces about $250,000 – that’s a perfect day,” Heeke said. “When you want to schedule an opponent (at home), generally guarantees run in the area of $200,000 to $300,000 dollars. So you can see real quickly that the net of those games is (minimal) or we’re going to take a loss to play the game.”

Still, Heeke is hoping for some seasons in the future where CMU can host six games.

“What I’d like our scheduling system to be is every other or every third year, having six home games,” he said. “There’s no question the more home games you can have, the better chance you have to win.”

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