It's So Hard to Schedule Good Teams
by Purple Reign on Jun 2, 2008 3:39 PM CDT
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PrintI haven't seen it anywhere in a Louisiana paper, but the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo., is reporting that LSU and Colorado's home-and-home meetings in football in 2011 and 2012 are no longer:
The Colorado football program postponed a planned home-and-home series with Louisiana State in 2011 and 2012 and replaced it by renewing a series with Fresno State.
Although contracts still must be signed, Fresno State recently agreed to a two-for-one, home-and-home series beginning in Boulder in 2011, at Fresno in 2012 and returning to Boulder in 2013, CU associate athletic director for sports information Dave Plati said.
Colorado did not have to pay LSU a penalty to get out of the series with the defending national champion because the contract with the Tigers, first announced in 2006, had not been signed. Plati said CU still hopes to add LSU to future schedules, but it would likely be more than a decade from now.
If this turns out to be true, it's very unfortunate. It's hard enough to get another BCS team on the schedule and other teams jockeying in and out makes it even tougher.
Personally, I'm disappointed because I love watching LSU take on powers from other conferences that it doesn't normally face. The Tigers and Buffaloes met six times between 1962 and 1980, but haven't faced off since.
In recent years, LSU has played Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Virginia Tech and even Notre Dame if you go back to the late 90s. Coming up over the next few years will be Washington (2009, 2012) and Colorado was supposed to help fill out that bill a couple years. However, now the Tigers have a hole in their schedule that will be very difficult to fill with a top-quality opponent.
It would be great over the next decade or two to see LSU rekindle its rivalry with the Fighting Irish or Texas A&M, or to add a some big-name teams to the slate that we don't get to see that much like Oklahoma, Nebraska, Michigan (never played), Ohio State, etc.
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Colorado bails out
That sucks. If they can’t find a quality BCS opponent, get ready for more bitching and moaning about how LSU doesn’t schedule anyone decent out of conference.
I didn’t realize we had never played Michigan, but that would be a fun home and home series, especially since one of my good friends is as fervent a Michigan fan as I am an LSU fan.
But I would really like to see a USC home and home. It would be as intense as an SEC rivalry game. I was in the student section for the 1979 game against USC and it was the loudest thing I ever heard. Another series with all the bad blood from 2003 would be something to see.
Some Why and Wherefores
Of all of the vices of the BCS, and there are many, perhaps the worst one is this: it encourages teams to play a rinky-dink out of conference schedule. Playing a bunch of middleweights and not losing is far better for a team than playing a really challenging OOC foe and losing. The best way to game the BCS is to play top tier mid-majors or middle of the pack BCS teams. There is no incentive to play USC other than the obvious one… both fan bases would like it. But who cares about the fans?
It’s a shame we don’t play A&M any more, a casualty of conference expansion and our less-than-stellar teams in the mid-90s. We backed out of the deal, A&M remembers and won’t ever schedule us again. Those guys hold a grudge. We never should have backed out (if memory serves, we won the lawsuit though), and A&M should start playing us again in the name of tradition.
Colorado has backed out on us. Texas Tech refused to schedule us. Now that we’re one of the giant programs, people aren’t exactly beating down our door to play us. LSU’s been burnt on two of its most recent home and home contracts (VT reneged on the return game for half a decade, and we never got a home game against Arizona St due to the hurricanes), so the Athletic Department wants its home game up front. Can’t say I blame them. Who’s out there who will play LSU? Other than Appalachian State?
Troy and that's about it
You’re also dead on about the non-conference scheduling to make the BCS. I hate to say this, but USC has mastered this art. Look at what they’ve done in the past with Fresno State, Arkansas, Notre Dame, Nebraska, BYU.
It's a good thing we had VTech last year
Because otherwise it would have been us kicking the crap out of Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. I think that sometimes we forget the potential upside of scheduling tough teams.
I think the NCAA should schedule one game per year for each team against comparable programs. If that were the case, LSU would very likely play USC in the regular season. I know this will not happen though.
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