I'm still not sure the math works on this.
According to what I could find -- and knowing the numbers may be a little off -- MSU is paying South Alabama $400,000 for each of its appearances in Starkville. That is a substantial discount off the going rate for paycheck games. I could not find what USA gets paid by other schools, but Auburn paid ULM just over $1 million for their game. Arkansas paid ULM just under $1 million, but it was a ULM "home" game that they could use for their attendance figures.
Lets say that USA could command something around $900,000 to play in Starkville.
If they played 3 games in Starkville, they would get $2,700,000. Instead, they are getting $800,000 for two games in Starkville, plus a home game against MSU.
That means the home game must be worth right around $2,000,000 to them. I'm not saying they make that much in revenue, I'm saying that the benefits of having an SEC team come to their stadium, plus their revenue, is significant enough that they are willing to leave $2,000,000 on the table. That means you have to come up with a lot more than $2 million to get them to move the game.
Or, just looking it at it another way, they need $1,000,000 to make up for the money they could have made just playing two paycheck games in Starkville, plus another million or so to convince them to move their home game against an SEC opponent over to Jackson.
Maybe my math is wrong, but I think your ticket prices just went up.
I don't know all the details of MSU's future schedules, but I'm really hoping that USA, LA Tech, and, I think, UAB are the only possible teams you could talk to about this deal. I like to think that our current status of consecutive sellouts means it is now profitable enough to just schedule paycheck games in Starkville without worrying about these discounted, return trip deals.