USC and UCLA

And Laramie ...

Well sure ... it's all a financial deal, which is what we were talking about. but even teams that would be considered similarly within the power structure of college football ... say Kentucky and Washington State  ... there is no freaking way Kentucky would do a home-and-home with the Cougs. You think Vanderbilt would agree to a home-and-home with Oregon State or Utah? Just wouldn't happen, as the western teams, other than four or five, will never guarantee the gate that an SEC or ACC team needs to go. And, as long as teams like Tennessee can buy their way out of playing games like this it won't ever change. Wyoming needs the money and Tennessee sure as hell doesn't want to play in Laramie.

 

Re: Laramie. I stand corrected.

I'm not sure why it's important what Vanderbilt would or would not do. Their gate is terrible. And I can't imagine a west team even wanting Vandy to visit.

LSU went to Arizona State last year. Arkansas went to USC last year. Tennessee is going to California next year. Mississippi State went to Oregon. Alabama went to UCLA. Auburn went to USC.

Ole Miss went to Wyoming in 2004. Isn't that comparable to your "never will happen" Kentucky-Washington State hypothetical?

What exactly do you want?

 

Not a chance. I doubt playing LaTech and Nicholls State in Lincoln will really provide much outside of extra reps before the USC game. USC has a week off after playing at Arkansas.

Yahweh willing, it'll be done by the end of the third quarter so those working for Central Time papers will have some breathing room.

 

I guess I'd like a situation where teams near the bottom of the financial food chain had an opportunity to work their way up and matter ... but with the current structure it simply isn't going to happen. It isn't so much about west vs. (south) east as it is about rich vs. poor ... it just so happens the football rich are disproportionately located in the south. My example of Vandy is only to point out that the football poor of the south would not even care to bother with teams of relative status in the west.

 

It's not easy.

But it is possible. Look what Bill Snyder did at Kansas State, what Gary Barnett did (for one magical season anyway) at Northwestern.

Fresno State. Louisville. Those programs seem on the cusp of something. Central Florida went from 0-11 to a bowl in one year, went from four home games last year to seven this year.

Part of the problem is once a team starts to climb up the food chain, the coach who helped get them there bolts to an elite program. See Meyer, Urban.

If you're talking about the bottom of the bottom (Louisiana-Monroe, etc.) . . . good luck.

It's not the NFL, which is probably a good thing. I don't think I could take 80 or 90 teams going 5-6 or 6-5.

 

I don't understand his point. He criticizes a 12th game, implies that it brings too many cupcakes into the schedule, gives several Pac-10 examples, then admits that the entire Pac-10 will have the same number of nonconference games anyway because a league game was added.

How did a 12th game create more pastries in the Pac-10, when the nonconference games in the league went from 3 to...uhh, 3?

 

USC is also going to play home and home with Miami, starting in 2009.

 

Exxxxcellent.

 

Georgia might be coming out west in 2010 or 2011 as the sandwich for an impending 2-for-1 series with a Pac-10 team that starts in 2007.

Agree that the premise of the column is faulted because the Pac-10 schools all actually upgraded their schedules by adding the ninth league game and completing the round-robin. That made it extra hard because every other year a Pac-10 team will play an unbalanced league schedule (four home, five away), when the rivalry game it on the road.

 

Screw USC. Please explain how it is UCLA's fault that you have never seen a UCLA-Notre Dame game

 

It's not UCLA's fault. I just hate UCLA.

 

Well I hate USC, so I guess we can leave it at that.