I woke up this morning thinking about the South Florida's upcoming 2011 season (I wish I woke up every morning that way). After running through home and away games, it occurred to me that the out-of-conference football games are rather weak. In the weeks following the biggest challenge of the season in Notre Dame, USF plays Ball State (4-8 last year), Florida A&M (an FCS team), and UTEP (a below-average team in C-USA). USF's only non-conference BCS opponent is Miami, who will be experiencing a transition year after the firing of coach Randy Shannon.
After thinking of my disdain for this year's schedule, I began thinking about OOC schedules of previous years. I'll link each schedule to the respective season. Last year, we opened with an FCS team in Stony Brook, went to Gainesville to play Florida, and prepared for conference play with games against two bad Sun Belt teams in FAU and Western Kentucky. In the year before, USF scheduled TWO FCS teams and a game AT Western Kentucky(!) in preparation for a trip to Tallahassee. Not to mention the large sum of money USF has to pay these fluff teams to come in for a thrashing. FAMU is getting $400,000 to come in next season, while UTEP is getting $650,000. In addition to losing that kind of cash, there is no income since no fans want to go see USF put up 70 points on a team mostly of big high schoolers. What I see going on here is the schedule makers putting one marquee OOC game per season on the list, and then fluffing the rest of the schedule with cupcake teams.
It's not the lack of juggernauts on the schedule that bothers me as much as it is the weakness of the teams we play and their reputation. USF stopped scheduling UCF every year because they felt we were moving on to better things in our near future. Following that last meeting, the only BCS teams that have been scheduled are all from the state of Florida. Now I'm not begging to schedule teams like Ohio State and Arkansas and Oklahoma in the same year, but there are plenty of teams in BCS conferences that are easily of similar caliber to some of these cupcakes we have now. By conference, here is a list of teams along with their 2010 records that could be suitable to replace these weaknesses. I'll bold teams who are are on the schedules of other Big East teams.
- ACC - Boston College (7-6), Clemson (6-7), Georgia Tech (6-7), Virginia (4-8), Duke (3-9), Wake Forest (3-9)
- Big 12 - Baylor (7-6), Iowa State (5-7), Kansas (3-9), Kansas State (7-6), Texas Tech (8-5)
- Big Ten - Minnesota (3-9), Illinois (7-6), Indiana *(5-7), Purdue (4-8), Michigan (7-6)
- Pac 12 - Washington State (2-10), Washington (7-6), Arizona State (6-6), Oregon State (5-7), Colorado (5-7), USC (8-5), California (5-7)
- SEC - Vanderbilt (2-10), Ole Miss (5-7), Kentucky (6-7), Tennessee (6-7), Georgia (6-7)
*Indiana is scheduled to play USF in 2015 and 2016
To be fair, it looks like the schedule builders have been thinking about this recently. In the next four seasons USF is scheduled to meet with Miami twice, Florida State, Florida, Michigan State, NC State, and Indiana, with 7 spots still available for non-conference opponents. USF does deserve to be taken seriously, but if they want to be nationally respected, they need to schedule more games against BCS opponents. Even if they're cupcake AQ teams, it's better to schedule them than a horribly weak minor conference team or an FCS team. Ultimately, putting these teams on future schedules will help in ticket sales as well, since fans of the larger schools will be more likely to travel. Ultimately, if USF wants to play with the big boys, they're going to have to invite them over.
I firmly believe that we should schedule, BYU, Arizona State, Vanderbilt,Baylor, Kansas...they're middle of the pack but better than what we have right now plus they have strong followings and national reputations
ReplyDeleteI agree, there's no questioning the kind of attention playing against a team with a history like BYU or Arizona State could bring our way.
ReplyDeleteSome really good points there. I really like the point you ended with. The fans of the bigger schools are likely to travel. That would definitely help with ticket sales. Fans and students from Stony Brook aren't going to be as likely to travel. Shoot, that was the biggest game they've had in the history of their football program and they still didn't travel like the big schools would. They don't have the passion and tradition as these big schools we should be playing.
ReplyDeleteI do kind of understand what they are doing though. It's a slow transition from playing smaller schools to bigger schools so they're trying to just get noticed first. I think that's why you see some of the bigger schools coming up in our future schedules.
you ask me like it or not I'd remove the annual I-aa game and put UCF or not. that'd get players fired up as no one would want to be remembbered as the one that lost to UCF
ReplyDeleteI agree, but the university officials are really trying to do whatever they can to avoid playing UCF. They believe we're on to much bigger things, which we definitely are. That's why we've been trying to establish a rivalry with Miami and Florida State, because those are established powers that can help us gain attention.
ReplyDeleteI got your point Mike but I'd love giving them a perennial beat down every year that's why I'd have them as the 1-AA team lol but yet again I understand the officials trying to do better.... I wrote AD Woolard an email about BYU hope we get them on deck
ReplyDeleteOh man that would be excellent
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