(09-25-2019 10:57 AM)illiniowl Wrote: (09-25-2019 08:08 AM)Hambone10 Wrote: I have no problem with scheduling FCS and 'weak' non-conference opponents. We've talked about this. If you go 12-0 with such a schedule, you can actually get some attention... and eventually you're going to be paired with a team with a name and a 6-6 record... If you're really good, it will be fine because you;ll win. The year after, you'd hope to have that 6-6 team in season, beat them, and then maybe play an 8-4 p5 team. Beat them and you're on your way. But if you're 9-3 against this plus a CUSA schedule, you'll be playing perhaps for the conference championship.... but getting whiped out by that 6-6 team and nobody will care. You'll be in front of 10,000 fans.
The schedule isn't as important as 'being good'. If you could go 6-6 against an SEC like schedule losing only to teams ranked in say the top 35, you'd have far more fans than if you went 9-3 against CUSA losing to teams ranked worse than 70. First of all, we aren't in the SEC so that's not an option to play more than perhaps 2 (or 3 if we get them in a bowl)...
Be good enough that you don't lose to teams ranked south of 50. Do that and the schedule won't matter
Don't you need good players and invested alumni/students/fans to get good in the first place?
Your argument to me sounds like "Play the easiest schedule possible to amass wins because winning, no matter vs. whom, will bring better players and more fans."
I would say that might work at some places but not Rice. Rice "consumers" (that includes players as well as students/alumni/fans) are not typical because this is a place with a lot of pride and history and self-regard (meh, and some might say elitist attitude; it is what it is). The opponent matters because it gives the game meaning, and without meaning, nobody will care or get invested. CUSA games -- so, 8 games out of 12 every year -- have no meaning on *this* campus. By contrast, at places like Boise or UCF or what have you, all of their games have meaning because they're steps up from their past history of being a I-AA school.
Put me down for the Fresno State/Southern Miss paradigm of "play anyone, anywhere, any time," which I think has a better chance to inspire people on this campus. Plus being in Houston (as opposed to Fresno/Hattiesburg) gives us a lot more negotiating power in terms of getting return games here.
I guess it all boils down to: we have 4 CUSA home games per year and we do seem committed to having 1 decent nonconference home game per year. So for that 6th game, which better serves the aims of the program: a throwaway FCS home game that we should win but no one will care about, or a road game (and in some years a home game) against a name opponent?
I don't know if I mistyped or you misread. I'll apologize for any mistyping/lack of clarity.
There are a number of ways to get 'good'. You can certainly do it through things as you've described, but there are other ways. If that's your point, I take no issue with it because I don't address how we get there. This is about schedules.
While I'd personally prefer to go 10-3 against a tougher schedule, I won't care if we go 13-0 against a weaker schedule instead. What I care about is only losing to some pretty good teams and not getting manhandled by anyone with a pulse. If you get manhandled by anyone in the top 25 and 'scrape by' teams ranked 75+, nobody will care that you were undefeated going into that bowl.
MY goal is to go 6-6 against a p5 schedule every year. That's not something we control. My secondary goal would be to go say 11-2 against a CUSA conference schedule and a p5 OOC. While we control that, we're not good enough to do that yet. Whether we get that good by going 13-0 against a weak schedule or (initially) 9-4 against that p5 OOC or any iteration in between, I don't care... as long as we get there.
Said differently, if we're going 13-0 against a weak schedule, we need to be hammering most of those teams. If we're going to be going 9-4, we need to be hammering those 9 and being competitive in the other 4. Sure, every year there are unheard of upsets... but MOST of the games good teams play against weaker teams, they win rather easily.
I did not and would not say at all that winning against anybody brings fans and better players. Winning against a weak schedule and ONLY against a weak schedule brings irrelevance. That's why I said doing so would bring you MAYBE 10,000 fans.
You can be 13-0 from CUSA and still not be good enough to beat a top 50 team. That isn't going to get it done. You can also be 13-0 against that same schedule, but be good enough to beat a top 50 team. The difference would be that games the former team won 13-10 on a late FG, the latter team won 23-7, scoring 20 in the first half and giving up the 7 in the last few minutes.... along with a few 42-10 wins. If you're doing the latter, I think you'll get a shot at a top 50 team, and if you're really good, you'll win that game too. I'm also fine with scheduling them as OOC... but I think a number of these moral victories also have to do with other teams not wanting to show their entire playbook. The problem CAN be that if you go 13-0, beating the socks off of a schedule of weak teams, nobody knows how good you are, but you're clearly much better than say #75 whom you played and beat handily. If you do that, but then lose to #45 in the third game, then they know you're no better than 45.
