ESPN: The NFL's bitch, but College Football's king

There have always been a handful of good intersectional games. Scheduling them has become harder in the era of larger conferences and more conference games.

But, yes, I do get concerned about the extent to which ESPN is controlling college football and basketball.

I do remember about 20 years ago, LSU turning down ESPN for a non-conference game because ESPN wanted to move the game to afternoon from it's evening time slot. (I remember because I happened to be covering that game.) Rarely happens anymore.

 

NYT piece was a good read, and I especially liked how they illustrate the way 50-60 schools have become economic/athletic superpowers through football broadcast rights money.

The 4-team playoff will only accelerate the income and influence gap between have and have-not Division I-A schools.

Big-time college football has been a business for quite a long time. ESPN just made the pie a lot bigger for the winners.

 

Yes, because if ESPN hadn't created a game for Alabama, the Crimson Tide would have begun the season with an open date.

 

They sure wouldn't have opened it with UAB.

 

UF's problem is that its toughest annual non-conference game happens to be in the same state. It's still a road game with 70,000 fans screaming against them, and for more than a decade this was a game against a Top 4 team. Don't really see what the big difference is if they traded a road game at Florida State for an OUT-OF-STATE game at, say, Clemson.

They also have 350-mile trips to Miami every few years (used to be every other year). Yes, it's IN STATE, but it's still further than an out-of-state game against Georgia Tech.

Could they try harder? I guess. But then you have the nonsense that they "lose" a home game by playing UGA in Jacksonville.

Tennessee goes to UCLA, Cal and Oregon, all in one decade. Alabama has upgraded its non-con, and finally so has UGA. LSU is doing well in that regard, too.

 

And for every Florida, there's a Tennessee, which goes to Oregon this year and Oklahoma next year.

 

Mirrors the men's basketball team schedule at the 'Cuse.

 

Virginia Tech used to live on Thursday night football it seemed and all sorts of other odd times in the early 2000s, but it got them some great exposure.

 

Playing at Florida State every other year and at Miami a couple of times is risking something. Just because FSU is a state rival doesn't mean there's no risk there.

 

With the way the system is currently set up, do you really want more than 4-5 tough games per year against Top 25 teams? You're not going to win them all and if you lose more than your share, you're coach is going to be out of a job and ticket sales will drop.

So if you play in one of the power conferences and have 3-4 games per year against other Top 25 teams, how many demanding non-conference games do you want? I'd say the mix is about right.

If, on the other hand, you are Boise State or Louisville and figure to walk over your league, then you crave the chance to line up and play against a heavyweight. And the only time to do that is non-conference or in a bowl game.

 

Seeing some misconceptions here. I've done many a story on SEC teams' schedules and not once did any SEC school make an excuse for the schedule as it being something that was done years ago.

Universally, they talk about the need to give home fans seven or eight home games to justify high season ticket prices which are high, in part, to pay for the never-ending stadium expansions around the league.

When your goal is a home-heavy schedule, you have to play teams willing to play at your place for a guarantee. That's almost always going to be teams from low-level conferences. A Big 10 team will not to an SEC stadium for a guarantee, period. So you end up playing several games against teams from the Sun Belt or the MAC or something comparable.

This is made more unbalanced by the neutral site games. If you are playing in the Chick-fil-A game, that means you will need to host three guarantee games to maintain an annual 7-game home schedule. If you didn't have the neutral site game, you could potentially play two "power" conference teams in home-and-homes, and manipulate it where you are always playing one at home and one on the road. That means just two guarantees. For obvious reasons, playing the one neutral site game is easier.

Now, take that a step further. Is there a big difference between a MAC team and a Missouri Valley team? A Sun Belt and a Southland? Not much, outside of the money they demand for a guarantee. Sam Houston State out of the FCS Southland would probably be a top 3-4 team in the Sun Belt. The Dakota team that keeps beating Sam Houston for FCS championships could probably win the MAC some years. Given the similar quality and the similar anonymity to SEC fans, why not save a couple hundred thousand dollars playing the FCS team instead?

These are explanations I've been given consistently over the years, rather matter of fact. The notion of games being scheduled years in advance does come up, but not in defense of a schedule in general, but of a specific game.

For example, when LSU opened at Washington, U-dub was coming off the first 0-12 season in Pac-10 history. So LSU was getting hammered for its schedule and LSU's defense was that when it set up the home-and-home with UW, the Huskies were perennial Pac-10 contenders, but they declined in the years since the contract was set up.

That's part of the attraction of the neutral site games. These games are often set up a year or two in advance and you can pretty much guarantee a good matchup with them. On the other hand, a traditional home-and-home is usually set up years in advance to try to find two playing dates where the schedules match. LSU set up a "neutral" home-and-home with Wisconsin with a game in Houston next season and one at Lambeau in 2016. There's a much better chance of the LSU-UW game in 2016 being a matchup dud than if it was set up in 2015. What if Miles retires and the LSU train derails around 2015 or so and let's say Wisconsin experiences a similar decline? Then the 2016 matchup won't be attractive at all, outside of the fact that it will be a college game at Lambeau.

 

Good points. If Big Time U can fill an 80k stadium, 7 or 8xs a year, Rival U feels they need to as well to "keep up."
Going on the road to play Boise, or Louisville costs you money and puts your season at risk. Figure the low-majors would also take a big hit on their budgets if they couldn't get these "money games."
Of course the NCAA could pass a rule not allowing more than seven home games per team per season.
Yeah, that will happen.