USA Today article on "The inventive way colleges are scheduling better games"

Quote:As UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford perused his football team’s first season as an FBS Independent — fall 2016, the upcoming season — he had a lot of open dates to fill, and no constraints due to a conference schedule.

So, he figured he might as well think with no constraints.

“We have probably more of an opportunity to do it now,” Bamford told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. “I can schedule more games and be a little bit more creative with our football and basketball schedules than a lot of schools can — because they just don't have the dates.”

South Carolina, scrambling to fill its 2016 football schedule, needed to host a home game on Oct. 22. Bamford realized his athletic department could do that, and more. He asked about basketball, too, trying to help his head men’s coach Derek Kellogg get a strong opponent to actually come to Amherst, Mass. The schools eventually agreed that UMass football would play a guarantee game at South Carolina, and the two men’s basketball teams would play a two-game, home-and-home series.

“It just so happens that (Gamecocks men’s basketball coach) Frank Martin's wife is a track alum of UMass,” Bamford said. “Frank was great. He said, ‘This is a good RPI game, we've got do some of this on the road,’ so he said home-and-home, it's no problem. Then, when I was looking to fill the 18 schedule in football, and we have probably more of an opportunity to do it again.”

The Minutemen set up a similar deal with Georgia; they announced this week they’ll play a football game at Sanford Stadium in 2018, and the two men’s basketball teams will play a home-and-home series during 2017-18 and 2018-19.

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Wanted to give props to Michael Traini ‏@rsox1221 , who also blogs on SB Nation http://www.underdogdynasty.com/