In the 1980s, when the financially strapped Cal State Fullerton football team would play anybody if the money was right, Titans coach Gene Murphy coined the term “body bag game.”

Playing at the likes of Louisiana State, Auburn and Florida, he cracked, “You leave with a tag on your toe and a check in your pocket.”

It was a lot funnier when UH was drawing 45,000 for some of those games against Fullerton and just about all the Rainbows’ nonconference opponents, from the powerful to the pushovers, came to Aloha Stadium.

We are reminded how much things have changed and the new era that is being embarked upon in UH scheduling with the announcement that the Warriors are wrapping up a deal to play at Ohio State in 2015, and are contracted to appear at Michigan in 2016 and at UCLA in 2017.

With the Buckeyes expected to expand Ohio Stadium’s seating capacity to 104,829 in 2014, Michigan Stadium currently at 109,901, and the Rose Bowl at 91,136, UH could be playing in two of the top three and three of the largest eight stadiums in the country.

The Warriors will be well paid for their travel and toil. They are contracted to receive $1 million to play in Michigan’s Big House under a deal put together by then-acting athletic director Rockne Freitas. His successor, AD Ben Jay, has negotiated a $1.2 million deal to appear in the Horseshoe and a $600,000 payday for the Rose Bowl. All calculated to help soothe the athletic department’s aching bottom line.

Whether you call them “guarantee” games, “body bag” contests or “bounty bowls,” they are part of the new fiscal reality for UH, one of the last of the so-called mid-majors to hold out. “Yes,” Jay acknowledges, “they are those (guarantee) games for us.”

So much so that to make room for the Buckeyes, UH is working with Washington to reschedule what had been the far less lucrative ($400,000) payday in Seattle.

Time was UH could get marquee foes to come to Aloha Stadium or sign on for a home-and-home series and turn down one-shot road appearances. The change reflects not only the growing disparity between the big money Bowl Championship Series conference haves and the non-BCS have-nots, but the fact that the Hawaii Exemption and 13th game aren’t the lures they once were.

Until UH went to Florida in 2008, absorbing a 56-10 loss to the Gators and Tim Tebow for the $600,000 check that came with it, it never really felt like the Warriors had engaged in a “body bag game” in their Division I era.

All the other marquee opponents they had played on the road in the previous 30 years had either been part of a series or an existing relationship or, as was the case with a 25-17 loss to Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2006, they were games UH was competitive in with more than a prayer of winning.

To be sure, the Warriors should reap some benefits beyond the Benjamins they pocket. Promising trips to football shrines in Columbus, Ann Arbor and Pasadena has to help recruiting.

And, if they manage to be competitive, there is both considerable exposure and validity to be gained instead of a toe tag.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.