10-18-2005, 03:21 PM
Method to the matchups
When it comes to college football scheduling, each school has a strategy to attract fans and provide opportunities for the team to be successful
Madison Hedgecock (44) and the Tar Heels got pushed around by the Utes last season at Utah.
By J.P. GIGLIO, Staff Writer
Chet Gladchuk saw the light in coach Paul Johnson's first home game. It was Sept. 7, 2002, and Gladchuk, Navy's athletics director, wasn't blinded by the postcard-perfect sun in Annapolis. It was the scoreboard -- N.C. State 65, Navy 19. "We got shellacked," Gladchuk said. "In terms of injuries and our confidence, we never recovered from that game."
Navy finished 2-10. After that loss, Gladchuk paid N.C. State $300,000 so Navy wouldn't have to play in Raleigh. The Midshipmen play a different ACC team today -- Duke, a team it beat 27-12 a year ago to kick off a 10-2 season.
"Why would we set up ourselves to fail?" Gladchuk said. "It makes no sense."
Like a good quarterback or a splashy facility, scheduling is crucial to building a winning program.
With the NCAA expanding to a permanent 12-game schedule next season, ACC teams will play eight conference games and four non-conference games. Those four can make a season, ESPN analyst and former N.C. State coach Lou Holtz said.
"If your No. 1 objective is to make a bowl, then you have to make sure you can win at least three of those games and then break even in the conference," Holtz said.
North Carolina has taken the opposite approach from Navy. According to the NCAA, the Heels played the second-toughest schedule in Division I-A in 2004; their opponents went 74-39 (.654). UNC played at Utah last season and made $250,000 but lost the game. The Utes return the favor today for the same price.
N.C. State would prefer to play a home-and-home series with other Division I-A teams, like UNC with Utah. Finding the right four games and fitting them around the conference schedule can be as futile as trying to solve pi.
"It's not as easy as saying, 'Let's see who want to play and then play them,' " N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said.
'YOU NEVER KNOW'
When John Bunting took over at UNC, he said he wanted to play the best. Little did he know Utah and Louisville would fall into that category. The Tar Heels' nonconference schedule featured both Top 10 teams last season, and the Heels lost to Louisville 34-0 and at Utah 46-16.
When those games were scheduled five years ago, neither was a dominant program.
"Schedules are made so far in advance you never know," said UNC senior associate athletics director Larry Gallo, who handles the football schedule. "I don't think there are any guarantees out there, not in Division I."
Gallo said he's trying to make the slate more palatable but still attractive.
The Heels have future home-and-homes with Colorado, Tennessee, Notre Dame and South Carolina. There are also dates with The Citadel and Rutgers.
"It's still a calculated guess," Gallo said. "Nothing more."
'YOUR OWN BOWL GAMES'
With three head football coaches on the payroll, East Carolina athletics director Terry Holland needs to sell tickets at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. The Pirates play in Conference USA, which doesn't have a household name, or even a neighbor, to attract ECU fans. Holland made sure the nonconference schedule does.
The Pirates will play West Virginia and Virginia next season at home and play at Virginia Tech. Holland says the schedule helps financially and competitively.
"We're scheduling our own bowl games," Holland said. "We feel like, with these opponents and locations, our fans have a chance to see a better game than 70 percent of the non-BCS bowl games."
ECU owes former coaches Steve Logan and John Thompson as much as $650,000 through 2007. Current coach Skip Holtz' deal is worth at least $390,000 annually.
Holland says all three salaries still don't equal "one ACC coach." He said he asked Holtz about the nonconference opponents, and the coach wanted a tough task.
"There's two ways to do it," Holland said. "Go soft and build your confidence and start tough and play up to your level of competition. Skip and I both agreed this was the best way to go."
'ATTRACTIVE BALANCE'
Alabama. Notre Dame. Penn State.
Duke will play each in the next three years. Duke athletics director Joe Alleva isn't trying to fool anyone over the purpose of those games.
"Frankly, we're scheduling those games as money games," Alleva said.
The Blue Devils will get a six-figure payday for all three games, including at least $450,000 for next year's game at Alabama.
Now that the NCAA will allow a 12th game beginning in 2006, Alleva said Duke will try to play one heavyweight and then three other games against like-minded schools.
Duke plays Navy, Vanderbilt, Army and Northwestern -- all academic types -- over the next three years.
"We're trying to play games that we have a chance to win," Alleva said.
Wake Forest has a similar philosophy. The Demon Deacons played at Nebraska on Sept. 10, and they get the Cornhuskers in Winston-Salem in 2007.
Most of their other games cross over with Duke's schedule. Wake has Rice, Stanford, Army and Navy.
"There has to be a balance," Wake Forest athletics director Ron Wellman said. "We're not going to downgrade our schedule and create an automatic three or four wins. We want to maintain an attractive schedule."
JILTED WOLFPACK
Scheduling for N.C. State has been something like a eighth-grade dance. State's the hopeful boy trying to get the attention of the pretty girls. More than once, State has been left standing alone by the punch bowl.
The Pack has been dumped by Navy, Temple, Central Florida and Louisville in the past three years.
Fowler also had Virginia Tech, at the time a Big East member, lined up as a nonconference opponent, only to have the Hokies join the ACC. State did score a home run with a two-game series against Ohio State.
All the juggling by the ACC with expansion and the television schedule and the jilting by other teams has left State with five Division I-AA opponents since 2002 -- more than UNC and Duke have played combined over the same span.
"Our fans tell me all the time they would rather lose 20-16 to Ohio State than beat a I-AA team," Fowler said. "We try to have a marquee game, but it doesn't always work out."
Fowler has tried to land Notre Dame, South Carolina, Syracuse and Texas A&M but has come up empty. State did arrange a home-and-home with Tennessee in 2008 and 2012. In the interim, Fowler's main concern is getting seven home games each season.
When it comes to college football scheduling, each school has a strategy to attract fans and provide opportunities for the team to be successful
Madison Hedgecock (44) and the Tar Heels got pushed around by the Utes last season at Utah.
By J.P. GIGLIO, Staff Writer
Chet Gladchuk saw the light in coach Paul Johnson's first home game. It was Sept. 7, 2002, and Gladchuk, Navy's athletics director, wasn't blinded by the postcard-perfect sun in Annapolis. It was the scoreboard -- N.C. State 65, Navy 19. "We got shellacked," Gladchuk said. "In terms of injuries and our confidence, we never recovered from that game."
Navy finished 2-10. After that loss, Gladchuk paid N.C. State $300,000 so Navy wouldn't have to play in Raleigh. The Midshipmen play a different ACC team today -- Duke, a team it beat 27-12 a year ago to kick off a 10-2 season.
"Why would we set up ourselves to fail?" Gladchuk said. "It makes no sense."
Like a good quarterback or a splashy facility, scheduling is crucial to building a winning program.
With the NCAA expanding to a permanent 12-game schedule next season, ACC teams will play eight conference games and four non-conference games. Those four can make a season, ESPN analyst and former N.C. State coach Lou Holtz said.
"If your No. 1 objective is to make a bowl, then you have to make sure you can win at least three of those games and then break even in the conference," Holtz said.
North Carolina has taken the opposite approach from Navy. According to the NCAA, the Heels played the second-toughest schedule in Division I-A in 2004; their opponents went 74-39 (.654). UNC played at Utah last season and made $250,000 but lost the game. The Utes return the favor today for the same price.
N.C. State would prefer to play a home-and-home series with other Division I-A teams, like UNC with Utah. Finding the right four games and fitting them around the conference schedule can be as futile as trying to solve pi.
"It's not as easy as saying, 'Let's see who want to play and then play them,' " N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said.
'YOU NEVER KNOW'
When John Bunting took over at UNC, he said he wanted to play the best. Little did he know Utah and Louisville would fall into that category. The Tar Heels' nonconference schedule featured both Top 10 teams last season, and the Heels lost to Louisville 34-0 and at Utah 46-16.
When those games were scheduled five years ago, neither was a dominant program.
"Schedules are made so far in advance you never know," said UNC senior associate athletics director Larry Gallo, who handles the football schedule. "I don't think there are any guarantees out there, not in Division I."
Gallo said he's trying to make the slate more palatable but still attractive.
The Heels have future home-and-homes with Colorado, Tennessee, Notre Dame and South Carolina. There are also dates with The Citadel and Rutgers.
"It's still a calculated guess," Gallo said. "Nothing more."
'YOUR OWN BOWL GAMES'
With three head football coaches on the payroll, East Carolina athletics director Terry Holland needs to sell tickets at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. The Pirates play in Conference USA, which doesn't have a household name, or even a neighbor, to attract ECU fans. Holland made sure the nonconference schedule does.
The Pirates will play West Virginia and Virginia next season at home and play at Virginia Tech. Holland says the schedule helps financially and competitively.
"We're scheduling our own bowl games," Holland said. "We feel like, with these opponents and locations, our fans have a chance to see a better game than 70 percent of the non-BCS bowl games."
ECU owes former coaches Steve Logan and John Thompson as much as $650,000 through 2007. Current coach Skip Holtz' deal is worth at least $390,000 annually.
Holland says all three salaries still don't equal "one ACC coach." He said he asked Holtz about the nonconference opponents, and the coach wanted a tough task.
"There's two ways to do it," Holland said. "Go soft and build your confidence and start tough and play up to your level of competition. Skip and I both agreed this was the best way to go."
'ATTRACTIVE BALANCE'
Alabama. Notre Dame. Penn State.
Duke will play each in the next three years. Duke athletics director Joe Alleva isn't trying to fool anyone over the purpose of those games.
"Frankly, we're scheduling those games as money games," Alleva said.
The Blue Devils will get a six-figure payday for all three games, including at least $450,000 for next year's game at Alabama.
Now that the NCAA will allow a 12th game beginning in 2006, Alleva said Duke will try to play one heavyweight and then three other games against like-minded schools.
Duke plays Navy, Vanderbilt, Army and Northwestern -- all academic types -- over the next three years.
"We're trying to play games that we have a chance to win," Alleva said.
Wake Forest has a similar philosophy. The Demon Deacons played at Nebraska on Sept. 10, and they get the Cornhuskers in Winston-Salem in 2007.
Most of their other games cross over with Duke's schedule. Wake has Rice, Stanford, Army and Navy.
"There has to be a balance," Wake Forest athletics director Ron Wellman said. "We're not going to downgrade our schedule and create an automatic three or four wins. We want to maintain an attractive schedule."
JILTED WOLFPACK
Scheduling for N.C. State has been something like a eighth-grade dance. State's the hopeful boy trying to get the attention of the pretty girls. More than once, State has been left standing alone by the punch bowl.
The Pack has been dumped by Navy, Temple, Central Florida and Louisville in the past three years.
Fowler also had Virginia Tech, at the time a Big East member, lined up as a nonconference opponent, only to have the Hokies join the ACC. State did score a home run with a two-game series against Ohio State.
All the juggling by the ACC with expansion and the television schedule and the jilting by other teams has left State with five Division I-AA opponents since 2002 -- more than UNC and Duke have played combined over the same span.
"Our fans tell me all the time they would rather lose 20-16 to Ohio State than beat a I-AA team," Fowler said. "We try to have a marquee game, but it doesn't always work out."
Fowler has tried to land Notre Dame, South Carolina, Syracuse and Texas A&M but has come up empty. State did arrange a home-and-home with Tennessee in 2008 and 2012. In the interim, Fowler's main concern is getting seven home games each season.