quo vadis
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I Root For: USF/Georgetown
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RE: Notre Dame hosts USF September 19
(08-29-2020 08:54 AM)otown Wrote: (08-29-2020 07:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (08-28-2020 10:35 PM)otown Wrote: (08-28-2020 09:51 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (08-28-2020 08:14 PM)whittx Wrote: That school to the NE has an on-campus stadium and more than double the season ticket holders. You need the one to sell season tickets and to break even for the year, since you're charging over $100 for upper deck tickets for that game.
But UCF isn't getting any big P5 opponents. IIRC, they have only been able to wrangle programs like Georgia Tech, UNC, Pitt, and Louisville.
What UCF has been doing is working. You cannot argue with results on the field and growing a season ticket holder base. Sure USF will have a few of these games, I would love it if UCF got them too, but in the grand scheme of things, what UCF managed to do was build a name from the pits crap, and now is persistent preseason top 25 team that usually stays there through the season and sure as hell gets talked about a lot, positively and negatively by the national media.... and in this game of popularity contests, there is no such thing as negative press.
No question, but what UCF has working for it has not seemingly been the result of its defiant "we only do 1 and 1s with P5" policy, because that policy was only recently announced, whereas UCF has been building the success you are currently enjoying on the field and in the stands since well before then.
Thus, the policy has been an effect of your success, not a contributory cause of it. The UCF attitude seems to be that *because* we now have a consistent top 25 program on the field and a growing ticket base, we now have the luxury of insisting on 1/1 with P5, and because of our new stature, they will comply with that.
But to me, the evidence does not support this line, in that since announcing it, UCF has not been able to attract any blue-chip P5 to its schedule. The kinds of brand names that USF has been able to attract have apparently not been impressed with UCF's stature, at least not yet, to buy in to that narrative.
Maybe they eventually will, but as of now, the USF approach seems to be bearing greater fruit.
About the last point point though, the media point, I would agree that your policy might be justified as part of a larger strategy. That is, in the national media, UCF has kind of gained an image as a "defiant rebel" that bucks the system. That started with unilaterally declaring yourselves national champions, and this 1/1 policy has the same "system be damned" feel to it. The system says Alabama is the champ? Well hell we're hanging a banner anyway! The system says good little G5 accept only away games or 2 for 1 with P5? Well to hell with that, we're only doing 1 for 1s! This also fits with the AAC "P6" theme, which is itself a system-bucking theme.
So if UCF thinks its program-building prospects are best served by pursuing a broad strategy of "not acting like a G5", of acting like a Power program in the belief that if you act a certain way you can eventually "make it so", kind of will it in to existence, which again I agree is pretty much what the AAC is doing with P6, then I agree that 1/1 has that logic to it, even if it doesn't result in its putative goals, like getting good P5 teams on the schedule. Now whether this grand "rebel" strategy, if UCF even has it, is a good one or not, is another question.
Not necessarily. UCF is a growing program and although they have been great on the field lately, if you throw in an Alabama on their schedule in 2017, even in Orlando, and if they lose even by like 3 points........they are no longer undefeated, therefore all that press is lost. As a G5, its all or nothing. There is no longer a weekly segment on all the major college football shows talking about their streak. Quite honestly, a BSU that goes undefeated or an App State that goes undefeated playing maybe playing 1 or 2 celler dweller P5s potentially would get the go ahead over UCF for the NY6. No guaranteed, but certainly a possibility. So in a sense, playing mid tier p5s has worked well for them. However, at some point they need to make the next step and gamble, i think now is the time since they made a name for themselves
That's good point there. E.g., last year, UCF was in the national conversation early on, but when they lost to Pitt, they fell off the map. Even as they then rebounded and had a very good season, finishing in the Top 25, it was like nationally nobody noticed once the Pitt game was lost.
So yeah, I can see that angle of the strategy as well. It's true that G5 are generally on a very short leash with the voters and national media. You have to be undefeated or you get forgotten quick.
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