Duquesne football coach Jerry Schmitt was at Pittsburgh Steelers practice at the UPMC Rooney facility on the South Side last week. He saw Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi hanging out in front of his team’s side of the building.

“I said, ‘Hey, Pat! Guess who opens up the ACC Network schedule this season? First game of the year,’’’ Schmitt said. “He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I told him we have one with Florida State.”

You can understand why Narduzzi may not have been able to put two and two together so quickly on that one.

But Duquesne’s football team really is playing at Florida State on the ACC Network. It’s happening on Aug. 27. Just four days before Pitt takes on West Virginia.

Speaking of which, Duquesne has a trip to Morgantown on its schedule on Sept. 9 of next year, and Coastal Carolina on Sept. 16, 2023. Not to mention Hawaii on Sept. 27 of this season. Then Toledo and Boston College in 2024. And Air Force in 2026.

That’s after playing TCU and beating Ohio last year.

That’s along with a recently agreed upon multi-team event for the men’s basketball team that will feature a trip to Rupp Arena to play the Kentucky Wildcats this year.

“It’ll be fun if we win,” Duquesne men’s basketball coach Keith Dambrot said. “It’s a hard game. They are going to have some of the best talent in the country. Hopefully, they won’t gel early on. … But that’s what you want to do. You want to know where you are (early in the season). You want to see who you can compete with.”

But for Dukes athletic director Dave Harper, these aren’t just measuring-stick games. They aren’t just massive steps up in the strength-of-schedule department to harden the players for their conference seasons. This is about making money. Putting dollars in the coffers for the programs.

For the football team, Harper said making those road trips to play the role of perceived warm-up opponent for some Power 5 and FBS competitors such as Florida State and Hawaii can account for “roughly half” of the Dukes’ budget.

“A school like Hawaii, they will pay for airfare and a guarantee,” Harper said. “Florida State is just paying a guarantee. Then our charter flight will be factored into that guarantee. So that is our expense. But the guarantee offsets it, and then some. If you can play someone like West Virginia that’s closer, just a bus trip, that’s helpful. But we don’t base it on that. It’s just (the) opponent.”

On the basketball side of things, Duquesne is getting two home games in November out of the other two participants from Kentucky’s MTE — reportedly North Florida and another school still to be announced.

The University is also using the Kentucky game as a large alumni and donor trip, as well as seizing an opportunity to make an appearance in SEC recruiting territory, while likely being on national television.

“We’ll do a nice steak dinner the night before the game. We have a lot of donors interested in going. It’s a good trip all the way around. It will help with our strength of schedule, no doubt. And, hopefully, we can give them a run for their money. … There are a lot of tentacles to it,” Harper said.

So how do these games come to be? How does Florida State find Duquesne and say, “Yeah. Let’s play those guys.” Is John Calipari texting Dambrot and saying, “Keith, you ever been to Lexington in November?”

Not so much.

The way Harper described the process for football, to me it sounds like big-time college athletics meets Match.com.

“There is a schedule program — Gridiron — it puts out there opportunities that are available. When they pop up, you’ve got to pounce. It’s like keeping an eye on your phone for that text message you are looking for. You get an alert and you’ve got to scan it constantly,” Harper said.

When it comes to basketball, a company out of Princeton, N.J. called the Gazelle Group puts together a lot of the MTEs across the country, including Kentucky’s. Last year, Robert Morris — from Calipari’s hometown of Moon — was involved with the Wildcats, Ohio and Mount St. Mary’s.

“The MTEs, we kind of do that as a group,” Dambrot said. “Our assistant athletic director and our assistant coaches work on those. Then our assistant coach brings all of the games to me at the end, and we make the final decision as to whether we are going to play that team or not.”

Is it something the coaches love? Not necessarily. Going on the road as huge underdogs is never ideal. Especially for the football team because injuries are at such a higher risk when the opposing roster has so many bigger, stronger, faster scholarship players.

Duquesne went to Fort Worth, Texas, last year and lost to TCU while getting starting quarterback Joe Mischler injured in the process, along with a few other players.

But the necessity for a program like Duquesne’s definitely exists. In terms of exposure, filling out a schedule and, most importantly, cash.

“We understand what it’s doing. It’s helping our athletic program with finances,” Schmitt said. “So we take it on as a great challenge and a great opportunity for our guys. We’ve just stepped the schedule up in the past couple of years. Slowly, we were playing with some FCS teams that were bigger programs. And then we just decided to take on some of these challenges and enjoy it.”

So Duquesne football is driving to Morgantown and visiting other ACC schools in Florida and Massachusetts soon. Why not a short trip over the Fort Duquesne Bridge to Heinz Field to play Pitt?

“I think that’s in talks. For sure,” Schmitt said.

We keep hearing that it’s too hard to resurrect the City Game because of basketball scheduling issues. In modern-day college athletics, is it actually easier to pull off in football?

“We’d welcome the opportunity. If they pick up the phone and would like a game, I am sure we’d answer. … We’ve scheduled ACC teams, so no different with them,” Harper said of a potential football game against Pitt.

The North Shore of Pittsburgh isn’t exactly the North Shore of Oahu. But it could still be fun.

And Pitt wouldn’t have to pad the buy to fly Duquesne to the stadium either.

In Wednesday’s Breakfast with Benz podcast, Duquesne head coach Keith Dambrot outlines the Dukes’ retooled roster, the upcoming MTE featuring Kentucky, and how the teams looks to bounce back after a difficult 2021-22 season

Listen: Tim Benz talks with Duquesne head coach Keith Dambrot on the state of the Dukes

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