David Teel expresses his opinion that Virginia Tech’s long-term out of conference football schedule is “Booooooring”. The article and VPI’s schedule can be found by clicking here. (In multiple parts of the article, Teel is particularly harsh on the Hokies for scheduling weak, East Carolina)
“If I’m anyone associated with East Carolina, I’m doing the Tom Cruise-on-Oprah’s-couch thing. But if I’m a Virginia Tech season-ticket holder, I’m pondering an eBay auction.
How else to interpret the Hokies’ recently unveiled 2006-11 non-conference football schedules? They’re balanced, prudent and certain to rake in millions. But man, they’re as dull as Bill Dooley’s offense.
An eight-year series with East Carolina? Six Mid-American Conference opponents in as many years, plus three Division I-AAs? Three home games in six years against teams from Bowl Championship Series conferences?”
Football scheduling is a topic that is discussed extensively in every off-season. The topic has been of hot conversation amongst Wolfpackers this off-season in light of many changes to the schedule that included Notre Dame’s exit from State’s schedule and the windfall of cash that State’s Athletics Department is receiving because of the cancellations and the inconveniences caused to the program.
I haven’t weighed into the scheduling conversation with too many personal opinions quite yet. (Why not save some of that for some “dead time”) However, I hope that a more macro-analysis of the schedules of our peers (like VPI and UVa that are discussed in this article), will cause many overzealous Wolfpack fans to re-think their (lack of) strategic thought regarding State’s future OOC football schedule while a member of the nation’s most difficult football conference.
And, for all you supporters of a pie-in-the-sky, impossible-to-logistically-implement college football playoff system…take a hard look at the results of what a playoff would yield. The new “super-conferences” are already showing you — there is little to no incentive for program’s to schedule interesting non-conference match-ups when you have such a tough mandated schedule in your conference and the ultimate result is that you may be risking a chance at a national championship that other schools are not risking due to their weaker overall schedule. These ‘wonderful’ ideas do not come without consequence — the primary consequence being that college football’s regular season is/would be rendered less significant (if not meaningless).
What is the ultimate difference if VPI plays UVa and Miami plays FSU within the conference or outside of the conference? From a national (title) perspective, as long as the game is on the schedule, then it comprises the exact same proportion of your overall season whether it is called a conference game or a non-conference game.
