Let’s give a cheer for the old University at Buffalo Bulls, perennially one of the worst teams in football, as they take the field this fall against two national powerhouses, Auburn and Wisconsin. Win or lose, the Bulls thereby double their appearance profits to $600,000 per game. “It’s all about the money,” observed the head coach at West Virginia, sparing sports fans the how-you-play-the-game bromides after his team was unceremoniously dumped from Buffalo’s schedule to make way for one of the power teams offering fatter paychecks.

Despite its 1-10 record last season, Buffalo’s value for big-time opponents is rising because the National Collegiate Athletic Association has added an extra game to the season. Weak teams like Buffalo are thereby in greater demand as sure things on the winners’ schedules. Buffalo will probably be humiliated on the field while its two new highly skilled opponents pocket easy victories in the competition for national ranking and bowl games, The Times’s Pete Thamel reports.

It’s a marketplace shift. Football is one of the few profitable college sports, and the 12th game will supply extra general revenue to university coffers. But that doesn’t stop college officials from offering excuses: Weaker teams will be honed, not pulverized, by overwhelming opponents. Some of the extra money pays for weight machines and training rooms to groom underachievers into college football mammoths.

In boxing, where euphemisms are scarce, “bum of the month” is the traditional term for booking weaker opponents to fatten a prospect’s record. But Buffalo’s team deserves no so such slight. We wish we could say the same for college football’s corporate masterminds.