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

Re: ESPN orchestrating games

ABC was doing that decades ago by getting Arkansas and Texas to move their SWC game from October to the final weekend of the season in 1969. Billy Graham was brought in to give the pregame invocation. Nixon was there to crown the champion.

 

Not doing so puts your season at risk, too.

If Auburn goes on the road and beats someone in 2004, perhaps they leapfrog Oklahoma in the BCS rankings and play USC for the title.

I don't think there are many (any?) examples, through the BCS years anyway, where a team can look at a road non-conference loss and say without an argument, "THAT GAME cost us a shot to play for the title."

 

UCLA losing at Miami, '98. A win and they play for the national title vs. Tennessee.
One of the famous hurricane games. I know there are others (Cal-Southern Miss, which Cal won) that ended up costing them when a Sept. non-con had to be rescheduled.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/college/news/1998/12/05/ucla_miami/

 

Good points all. Unless/until there is some central scheduling authority, like the NFL, what we see now is what we will continue to get, with the big schools hosting 6-7 games per year and selling out the 90,000-seat stadiums.

 

One thing you have to remember is how long the mid-major dole line is and how good of a business arrangement it is for all involved.

As mentioned earlier, the $250k-$400k an FCS team gets for one of these games will allow them to make ends meet for their entire athletic department. For the Sun Belt-MAC types, the same is true for the $500k-plus they demand. One of those games will exceed what they get in their home gates for the season. In a way, it's their ticket to the big-time TV money as that is basically what they are being bought with.

On the other hand, there is that ability for the big school to play an extra home game which, if you seat 90k, is likely an extra million dollars to the budget even after the money you pay out with the guarantee.

Given all that, who is going to be against the current arrangement? Maybe some West Coast schools because they don't draw the gate of the southern teams and, hence, have less of an incentive of playing guarantee games where the guarantee largely offsets the ticket sales. UCLA was second in the Pac-12 in attendance at 68k a game. That would have barely put them in the top 10 in the SEC.

But too many schools, both large and small, gain from this arrangement for it to change.

 

You should have in your non-conference schedule a game you could lose and a game you should lose.

If you win the game you should lose, that goes a long way to getting you to the Title game.

 

I'd love to see USC or Alabama or Michigan play at Boise State.

 

If only there was some large organization, with the influence and money, to make a game like one of those happen.

 

Oregon played there relatively recently, but it would take a hell of a payday to convince Michigan to give up a date when it could easily sell 100,000 tickets at home. Boise's not helped by being so isolated either. It's 500 miles from the nearest NFL stadium, so there's not really an option for a semi-neutral kinda home game against one of the big boys. Maybe if Northern Illinois becomes the next Boise (doubtful) it could get somebody to play a big game at Soldier Field.

 

Why the fuck should they even consider that to begin with?

 

That's the whole point. No neutral field bullshit. Go TO Boise and play on the Smurf Turf, in that small stadium, so that Boise gets every bit of the home-field advantage in the same way Michigan gets its 112,000 home-field advantage.

Forget the money, forget what it means for bowls and BCS games, forget everything else.

Just do it for the challenge.

Do it for the fun.