Quote: Our league has kind of told us to stay away from playing Top 20 teams on the road that are Power 5 teams, guarantees or not,” Byington said. “They would want you to play a 25 to 45 NET team if you’re going to play a Power 5. If you look at those teams that are on there, none of those teams would play us this past year. And some of those teams won’t play us next year. I know right now we’re already getting told no. I’m not completely bought into that. I understand what they are doing for NETs and stuff like that, but I think you learn a lot about a team in those situations and it’s usually on national television. Those aren’t bad things at all.

(04-19-2023 03:22 PM)UofRfan Wrote:  Per the DNR this morning the Sun Belt has suggested for teams to avoid playing on the road vs Top 20 teams

Quote: Our league has kind of told us to stay away from playing Top 20 teams on the road that are Power 5 teams, guarantees or not,” Byington said. “They would want you to play a 25 to 45 NET team if you’re going to play a Power 5. If you look at those teams that are on there, none of those teams would play us this past year. And some of those teams won’t play us next year. I know right now we’re already getting told no. I’m not completely bought into that. I understand what they are doing for NETs and stuff like that, but I think you learn a lot about a team in those situations and it’s usually on national television. Those aren’t bad things at all.

At first glance I don't agree with this at all. I don't think the league should be super preoccupied with the NET because it mostly will only affect the auto-bids seeding. If you are trying to gimmick up Quad 1 records winning at the 75th best team on the road is the same as the #1 team in country. But does this really matter?

I am sure there is some theory behind this scheduling philosophy but I'd love to hear it. In doing some reasearch I realized they have made some changes to the NET which including getting rid of the scoring cap which was in theory to prevent teams from running up the score. Perhaps playing Top 20 teams on the road destroys your Net Efficiency which is a key variable in the NET.

Maybe it makes sense from a gaming the NET theory but I'd rather get the exposure of facing a Top 20 team as well as the test it provides. Especially if scheduling is impossible for JMU which it sounds like it is.

Anyone know the Sun Belt's reasoning here? Wish they had mentioned it in the article.

(04-20-2023 01:25 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  Scheduling in basketball and football continues to be a problem. Only way to fix it is to have the NCAA mandate X amount of home games and X amount of road. In football they mandate how many FCS games count toward bowl eligibility in football, they could just as easily the home/road game totals. Force the P5s to go on the road and/or pony up the $ to buy that neutral site game to make it count as a road game for them. No reason by the big boys in football get 7-8 home games and the G5s have to go there for the $$$, forgoing their own home out of conference games to take on these bodybag payday games. The NCAA just won't ruffle the feathers that need to be ruffled.

(04-20-2023 01:25 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  Scheduling in basketball and football continues to be a problem. Only way to fix it is to have the NCAA mandate X amount of home games and X amount of road. In football they mandate how many FCS games count toward bowl eligibility in football, they could just as easily the home/road game totals. Force the P5s to go on the road and/or pony up the $ to buy that neutral site game to make it count as a road game for them. No reason by the big boys in football get 7-8 home games and the G5s have to go there for the $$$, forgoing their own home out of conference games to take on these bodybag payday games. The NCAA just won't ruffle the feathers that need to be ruffled.

(04-20-2023 03:42 PM)orange-to-purple Wrote:  How can a conference do that, beyond a "suggestion"? I mean, seriously, people.

Quote:The ACC has asked its schools to schedule “most, if not all, of their future nonconference road games at either Power Five teams or Army,”

(04-20-2023 01:58 PM)Dukester Wrote:  

(04-20-2023 01:25 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  Scheduling in basketball and football continues to be a problem. Only way to fix it is to have the NCAA mandate X amount of home games and X amount of road. In football they mandate how many FCS games count toward bowl eligibility in football, they could just as easily the home/road game totals. Force the P5s to go on the road and/or pony up the $ to buy that neutral site game to make it count as a road game for them. No reason by the big boys in football get 7-8 home games and the G5s have to go there for the $$$, forgoing their own home out of conference games to take on these bodybag payday games. The NCAA just won't ruffle the feathers that need to be ruffled.

I guess at this point home football games against decent FBS teams is an issue, but I'm still in the Honeymoon period of playing any home FBS games.

Wonder who the first P5 home game will be......

(04-20-2023 05:05 PM)JMUDuke4Ever Wrote:  As for regulating how many home and away games each team plays is ridiculous. It hurts schools that rely on guarantees (talking the smaller MAC schools, GMU and VCU for basketball, etc.). Yes it may help us get more home games, but it kills our local peers that we actually want on our schedule.

(04-20-2023 06:13 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  

(04-20-2023 05:05 PM)JMUDuke4Ever Wrote:  As for regulating how many home and away games each team plays is ridiculous. It hurts schools that rely on guarantees (talking the smaller MAC schools, GMU and VCU for basketball, etc.). Yes it may help us get more home games, but it kills our local peers that we actually want on our schedule.

If you’re relying that much on OOC road games to fund a basketball program you have bigger issues. Unlike football with 85 scholarship players and a huge coaching staff and support staff that needs to travel, you only have 12 scholarship players and a small travel party. MAC schools rely on those paydays because with the ESPN midweek game schedules and popularity of OOC road games for $$$$, the home Saturday games with decent weather are far and few between which killed attendance and donations which requires that OOC road games for $$$$….rinse, wash, repeat…

Those “local peers” aren’t coming now, so what would it hurt? And in football we could kiss the Bucknell and Bloomsburg games goodbye and snag an occasional P5 home game instead because they would have to get on the road to fulfill obligations. Those that were sick of the FCS and CAA and thought we were too big, welcome to the big boys in the FBS where the SBC will always be at the mercy of the big boys. They’d rather have 9 teams from a power conference go to the tourney before letting a 2nd SBC team in.

(04-20-2023 06:24 PM)JMUDuke4Ever Wrote:  

(04-20-2023 06:13 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  

(04-20-2023 05:05 PM)JMUDuke4Ever Wrote:  As for regulating how many home and away games each team plays is ridiculous. It hurts schools that rely on guarantees (talking the smaller MAC schools, GMU and VCU for basketball, etc.). Yes it may help us get more home games, but it kills our local peers that we actually want on our schedule.

If you’re relying that much on OOC road games to fund a basketball program you have bigger issues. Unlike football with 85 scholarship players and a huge coaching staff and support staff that needs to travel, you only have 12 scholarship players and a small travel party. MAC schools rely on those paydays because with the ESPN midweek game schedules and popularity of OOC road games for $$$$, the home Saturday games with decent weather are far and few between which killed attendance and donations which requires that OOC road games for $$$$….rinse, wash, repeat…

Those “local peers” aren’t coming now, so what would it hurt? And in football we could kiss the Bucknell and Bloomsburg games goodbye and snag an occasional P5 home game instead because they would have to get on the road to fulfill obligations. Those that were sick of the FCS and CAA and thought we were too big, welcome to the big boys in the FBS where the SBC will always be at the mercy of the big boys. They’d rather have 9 teams from a power conference go to the tourney before letting a 2nd SBC team in.

Not every school has a football team so schools gotta make their money somehow. The MAC doing what they did for the weekday games was also for branding.

But you literally are contradicting yourself by saying "lets just drop Bucknell for a P5 home game" like their is a waitlist of all the P5 schools on their knees begging to kiss the ring.

The local peers aren't coming for a variety of different reasons:
- they are being told not too
- They have better offers
- Or we are asking for too much and having too big of an ask... I know that's gonna be a tough one to hear, but maybe we're the problem in some of these "negotiations". Case in point being our fans thinking we can go from playing Bucknell in a tune-up game that even Bama and Georgia play these types of games to all of a sudden getting a minimum of 1 home P5 opponent every year.

We need to take the baby steps to snowball is into these conversations of being at the table with the rest of the country. That is unless you've got an annual multi-million dollar check to hand to Bourne each year to put your money where your mouth is.

(04-20-2023 01:10 PM)olddawg Wrote:  The whole article was kind of depressing to those of us looking for an upgraded schedule. Sounds like the local and regional P5s have really circled the wagons in terms of scheduling us. More lines drawn in the sand by the Cartel. Maybe we have an alum who can get the ear of the Governor and put pressure on the state P5s to schedule other state schools?

It was great that we got UVA to do a 2 for 1. But our nitwit fans hurling expletives at Bennett may have torpedoed future matchups with them. And it sure would be nice to play VT and VCU as well. VCU finished last season ranked 60th by KenPom. VT was 80th and we were 98th. So not a tremendous difference there.

Here's a segment from Mettlen's DNR article on the scheduling:

JMU has also tried to limit air travel in non-conference games, saving the travel budget to charter flights to certain Sun Belt games. Ideally, the Dukes would like to secure home games against notable opponents, whether in the form of home-and-home series with teams from conferences such as the Atlantic 10 or two-for-one deals with teams from a high-major league.

But only a few teams are willing to make that deal.

“I love it when we play Power 5’s,” Byington said. “Our goal when we try to do a Power 5 is to do a two-for-one. But they’re just not coming here. They don’t want the threat of losing at our place. Some of them don’t even want us to come to their place for one. There’s got to be some more strategic things with scheduling. I think we’ll play at least one of them. I don’t mind, if our program keeps advancing, playing two or three of them in a year. The issue is going to be that none of them are going to be in Harrisonburg.”

Quote:The ACC has asked its schools to schedule “most, if not all, of their future nonconference road games at either Power Five teams or Army,”

(04-21-2023 11:02 AM)ShadyP Wrote:  Oh and since you brought it up he got chanted to by the students b/c he was angry he was losing and during the media timeout stormed all the way near the JMU huddle on the other side of the court to yell at the officials. He did so with no penalty or Technical so he got some harsh words from the students......he sorta earned it.