Here's an interesting article from Mickey Fufari, who's been covering the Mountaineers since the 1940s. This idea gets floated around about every five years or so. Enjoy...

The Charleston Daily Mail Wrote:College football needs preseason scrimmages
by Mickey Furfari
For the Daily Mail
Monday August 24, 2009

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The National Collegiate Athletic Association, known to one and all simply as the NCAA, ought to wake up.

It should permit member institutions to better prepare their football teams. This could be done by permitting preseason scrimmages against an opponent school or two.

Michigan Coach Rich Rodriguez has been among Division I-A football coaches who firmly believe that this is needed to turn out stronger teams.

He's pointed that out annually, as have other coaches. The NCAA has still yet to consider seriously such a move.

Yet that organization permits basketball teams to play two pre-season scrimmages against outsiders each year. Surely that helps those teams become stronger.

Why not football?

Even the country's high schools are allowed to scrimmage against each other in football before a season's start.

Why not colleges?

Although retired, former West Virginia Coach Don Nehlen still thinks it's a great idea. He's a former president of the College Football Coaches Association.

The Hall of Famer thinks the NCAA probably fears permitting school vs. school preseason scrimmages might be abused by some.

Ironically, making an outside scrimmage a part of preparation for the regular season would not be a first.

I remember seeing West Virginia scrimmage the Quantico Marines in camp at Jackson's Mill in the 1950s.

"They had a lot of college players, and they were really good," recalls Fred Wyant, then the Mountaineers' starting quarterback. "Boy, were they tough."

Wyant said the starters battled on fairly even terms. But Quantico claimed an edge in No. 2 vs. No. 2 and No. 3 vs. No 3 skirmishing.

"I believe that helped make us a better team," Wyant said.

College football deserves more consideration and stronger support. It's become a bigger business than ever.

I can remember when the WVU athletic budget was $9 million. Now it's more than $40 million annually.

And football is the chief moneymaker. It pretty much provides financial support for most of the other sports.

Depriving football of an opportunity to produce stronger teams continues to baffle me.

The NCAA should be ashamed. It just doesn't make sense in this matter.

what would you call Liberty

a scrimmage that counts...

Personally what I'd like to see is a single preseason scrimmage against a 1-AA school. Ban playing 1-AA schools during the season except for transitional schools and then its limited to 1 home and home every 6 years. Keep the 12 game schedule in tact of course.

(08-24-2009 09:07 PM)brista21 Wrote:  Personally what I'd like to see is a single preseason scrimmage against a 1-AA school. Ban playing 1-AA schools during the season except for transitional schools and then its limited to 1 home and home every 6 years. Keep the 12 game schedule in tact of course.

I hear you about the 1-AA schools, but the unfortunate reality is that those games are here to stay in the regular season. They are relatively inexpensive body bag home games for BCS schools in a world where the price for guarantee games against non-BCS schools is continually rising. There are 2 guarantees: we're never going to see less than a 12 game regular season again (so any playoff proposal that says "let's shorten the regular season back to 10 or 11 games" is DOA) and games against Division 1-AA teams are here to stay.

As for the concept of a college football preseason in general, I'm against it. Frankly, all it would do is put more players at risk for injury in meaningless games than anything. Look at the NFL preseason, where teams generally just look to get out of it unscathed. All signs point to the NFL paring back its preseason from 4 to 2 games because it's way too long and the games are low quality. I love football in all forms, but I get irritated at the quality of play by the 2nd week of the preseason. While there's relatively low risk to have basketball preseason games, I'm very wary of sending football players out for anything less than real competition. Besides, the "preseason" in college football are those OOC games against the MAC-type schools of the world.

NO TO PRESEASON GAMES!!!!

:noisycricket: :noisycricket: :noisycricket:

Offer a deal. Grant pre-season games for a reduction in the number of football scholarships. NCAA suddenly would be home to dozens of new lacrosse, hockey, soccer and baseball programs.

If college football adopted preseason scrimmages, then their main argument against the playoff system goes right out the window.

My first thought is D1aa games are basically scrimmage games. But not every team plays D1aa games.

I wouldn't wanna see a UAT vs Troy scrimmage. I don't see it being very beneficial.

I would like to see a equally-ish matched teams playing. Let them work on the fundamentals. Like another spring game.

A big key to would be keeping money out of it.

Heck, let the NCAA pick the game matchup.

(08-25-2009 08:22 AM)PGPirate Wrote:  A big key to would be keeping money out of it.

Then there's no point for the athletic department, is there? Going through the pure cost of staging a preseason game without revenue with a matchup that could've been a regular season game with a lot of revenue doesn't sound like a good sell for any athletic department that's trying to meet budget contstraints.

At a lot of basketball schools, tickets to preseason games are sold in season ticket packages at regular season prices, thereby giving those schools an extra 2 home games of revenue. There would be little incentive to pay the cost to bring in Division II schools if you couldn't sell tickets to those games. Similarly, NFL teams also have their season ticket holders buy tickets to preseason games at regular season prices - those teams are now dependent upon 10 home games of revenue (8 regular season, 2 preseason). If I'm going to pay full price for a ticket (and don't be so naive to think that schools won't charge full price for college football preseason games), then I want to see an actual game with implications as opposed to a scrimmage.

Here's another consideration: the main on-the-field purpose of preseason games is to evaluate talent on your rosters and trying out plays as opposed to actually winning. However, if, say, #1 Florida comes out looking flat in its hypothetical preseason game against a Division I-AA school, then pollsters are going to start questioning how good that team is before the regular season starts (it might not be logical or the correct way of looking at things, but it's just human nature). Whether we agree with it or not, the poll rankings matter a whole lot in college football. The power schools risk a whole lot by playing a preseason game with virtually no upside since they're not going to want to play their starters for very long (and thereby risk looking bad when the second and third teams are in the game). It's not the same in college basketball, where a poor performance in a preseason game is mitigated by the sheer length of the regular season along with the NCAA Tournament.

Anyway, I am very much in favor of the NFL replacing 2 preseason games with 2 regular season games and hope that the concept of a preseason never comes to fruition in college football.

(08-25-2009 09:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-25-2009 08:22 AM)PGPirate Wrote:  A big key to would be keeping money out of it.

Then there's no point for the athletic department, is there? Going through the pure cost of staging a preseason game without revenue with a matchup that could've been a regular season game with a lot of revenue doesn't sound like a good sell for any athletic department that's trying to meet budget contstraints.

Bingo! Also, tryinging to keep money out of college football is redundant. There's already a ton of money in the game, and trying to get rid of it is self-defeating...