(09-18-2019 05:56 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(09-18-2019 10:05 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  The Big Ten seems to have reneged on their whole "no FCS thing" ...

Have they? When they first announced it, they said they wouldn't require breaking existing contracts, and when they announced it was being relaxed, I seem to recall they still put limits on it. Unless I recall that incorrectly and they've actually gone back to open season on FCS games, it would be more accurate to say they've relaxed their "no FCS" rule to "a limited number of FCS games" rule.

If limited means "a whole lot of FCS games, but not one for every team in every season", then it's limited.

Just in games that have been publicly announced so far, here are what 6 of the Big Ten teams have scheduled:

Indiana has an FCS game in 4 of the next 5 seasons including this one.
Minnesota has an FCS game in 3 of 4 seasons.
Illinois has one in every even year from 2020 through 2026.
Nebraska has one in every even year from 2020 through 2028.
Maryland has FCS games in 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2025.
Rutgers has FCS games in 2020 and 2021.

(09-18-2019 05:46 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(09-15-2019 08:36 PM)shizzle787 Wrote:  ACC: Boston College, Wake Forest, NC State, Syracuse, Virginia, UNC, Duke, Georgia Tech

GT will not be playing UCONN in football. While Paul Johnson was there, maybe, largely because teams hated playing the 3O so bad they avoided scheduling GT like the plague. After PJ's run in '14 to the Orange Bowl Ole Miss, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt all vanished from the future schedule. That combined with staggering incompetence led Mike Bobinski (thanks again Purdue for removing him) to schedule such head scratchers as a straight up 1 and 1 with USF and UCF.

GT will gain literally nothing by playing UCONN now. If Edsall was cozy with the O'Leary gang and competent he'd have an assistant position in Atlanta like everybody else practically has already. GT doesn't recruit players up there. If GT wins they get ... nothing. If they lose they get ridiculed. Why schedule that game?

I think you'd find similar answers from nearly everybody in the ACC and SEC except other teams that have trouble getting their schedule filled because nobody wants to play them (read: Clemson, Alabama, 3O teams).

The SC/GT series was actually cancelled in May 2013.

(https://fbschedules.com/south-carolina-g...ll-series/)

Part of the problem was that the series wasn't balanced with our Clemson games, so in 2021 we would've had 8 home games and in 2022 only 6. There isn't really a great way to resolve this since GT plays UGA on the same cycle so one school was inevitably going to have to bite the bullet.

Also, there were pretty strong rumors circling at the time (it went as far as the SC president announcing it prematurely at a public BOT meeting) that the SEC was going to 9 conference games, which would have complicated things further.

I would love to see a series between us at some point though for sure.

(09-18-2019 10:29 AM)TuckerGnat Wrote:  I doubt UConn can sign any P5 teams for a home-and-home series. It'll be hard enough to get 2/1 agreements. As far as future home-and-home series, UConn will be limited to G5 programs.

There may be some programs that will agree to a series based on the promise of some basketball games, but no ACC program needs this. I doubt any B1G team does, either.

Things may change if UConn establishes itself as a serious independent, but until then, it's going to be 2/1 (at best) with a few P5's—but more likely one-off body-bag games in P5 stadiums. Otherwise it's other independents, G5's, and FCS teams.

So much for that...

(09-19-2019 01:24 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(09-18-2019 10:29 AM)TuckerGnat Wrote:  I doubt UConn can sign any P5 teams for a home-and-home series. It'll be hard enough to get 2/1 agreements. As far as future home-and-home series, UConn will be limited to G5 programs.

There may be some programs that will agree to a series based on the promise of some basketball games, but no ACC program needs this. I doubt any B1G team does, either.

Things may change if UConn establishes itself as a serious independent, but until then, it's going to be 2/1 (at best) with a few P5's—but more likely one-off body-bag games in P5 stadiums. Otherwise it's other independents, G5's, and FCS teams.

So much for that...

Nice! I think Uconn will get some home and homes from P5 teams.

(09-19-2019 01:26 PM)Gamecock Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 01:24 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(09-18-2019 10:29 AM)TuckerGnat Wrote:  I doubt UConn can sign any P5 teams for a home-and-home series. It'll be hard enough to get 2/1 agreements. As far as future home-and-home series, UConn will be limited to G5 programs.

There may be some programs that will agree to a series based on the promise of some basketball games, but no ACC program needs this. I doubt any B1G team does, either.

Things may change if UConn establishes itself as a serious independent, but until then, it's going to be 2/1 (at best) with a few P5's—but more likely one-off body-bag games in P5 stadiums. Otherwise it's other independents, G5's, and FCS teams.

So much for that...

Nice! I think Uconn will get some home and homes from P5 teams.

I figure something will be announced with Rutgers sooner or later, and BC's already on the schedule. Also, while I'm at it...

Mostly just confirms what everyone expected though - UConn and UMass are going to play annually from here on out.

(09-19-2019 01:26 PM)Gamecock Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 01:24 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(09-18-2019 10:29 AM)TuckerGnat Wrote:  I doubt UConn can sign any P5 teams for a home-and-home series. It'll be hard enough to get 2/1 agreements. As far as future home-and-home series, UConn will be limited to G5 programs.

There may be some programs that will agree to a series based on the promise of some basketball games, but no ACC program needs this. I doubt any B1G team does, either.

Things may change if UConn establishes itself as a serious independent, but until then, it's going to be 2/1 (at best) with a few P5's—but more likely one-off body-bag games in P5 stadiums. Otherwise it's other independents, G5's, and FCS teams.

So much for that...

Nice! I think Uconn will get some home and homes from P5 teams.

Agreed. That's why I'm a bit more positive about UConn's ability to keep afloat as an FBS independent. Ultimately, if UConn ends up with 3 or 4 P5 games per year, then it almost doesn't matter who else is on the schedule. The UConn fan base looked at the AAC teams (other than maybe Cincinnati) as largely interchangeable with all other G5 teams (even though the AAC teams are clearly better on-the-field). A few more top end P5 games is really the goal for UConn if they're going to make the best out of independence.

By the same token, most P5 schools look at all G5 schools as interchangeable for non-conference scheduling purposes, as well. The P5 schools really don't care at all that UConn is an independent and, if anything, it might be a slight positive (as the P5 look at the Big East as a legitimate peer in basketball, so there may not be the "G5 stigma" attached to playing UConn regardless of how good or bad they may be on the field in a given season).

To be clear, scheduling as an independent is not going to be an easy task for the UConn athletic department year-after-year. However, I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn at the FBS level are jumping to conclusions too quickly. The P5 may not want UConn as a member, but they could get into that BYU/Army realm of the P5 generally not having an issue with playing them home-and-home.

Keep the haters coming. I love it.

Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

(09-19-2019 06:57 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

It's not that we want UConn football to fail. But we're looking at the situation, and UConn's administration seems to be okay with UConn football failing. UConn made a conference move without securing a place or a future for their football program. As if the FBS football program is disposable.

We're less than a year away from the 2020 football season, and UConn is short 2 FBS home games, plus a bunch of road games. Looking at FBSchedules.com, there are only 15 FBS programs with openings of any kind. 7 of those 15 schools don't have FCS games scheduled, and usually play FCS teams. 5 of the remaining 8 have an opening because they play at Hawaii and are allowed a 13th game. The other three are UCF, TCU and SMU. TCU and SMU are probably playing each other, and TCU is probably playing an FCS game rather than traveling to UConn.

So you're trying to convince Mountain West teams to travel to Storrs to play a 13th game, trying to convince UCF to make a trip to Storrs for a nonconference game, continuing the "Civil CONNflict".

Either your administration did that with their eyes open, or they did that not knowing what they were doing.

(09-19-2019 08:28 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 06:57 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

It's not that we want UConn football to fail. But we're looking at the situation, and UConn's administration seems to be okay with UConn football failing. UConn made a conference move without securing a place or a future for their football program. As if the FBS football program is disposable.

We're less than a year away from the 2020 football season, and UConn is short 2 FBS home games, plus a bunch of road games. Looking at FBSchedules.com, there are only 15 FBS programs with openings of any kind. 7 of those 15 schools don't have FCS games scheduled, and usually play FCS teams. 5 of the remaining 8 have an opening because they play at Hawaii and are allowed a 13th game. The other three are UCF, TCU and SMU. TCU and SMU are probably playing each other, and TCU is probably playing an FCS game rather than traveling to UConn.

So you're trying to convince Mountain West teams to travel to Storrs to play a 13th game, trying to convince UCF to make a trip to Storrs for a nonconference game, continuing the "Civil CONNflict".

Either your administration did that with their eyes open, or they did that not knowing what they were doing.

To be fair, though, this happened to BYU when they announced their independence, too. There's no real prescribed way to transition from being a conference member to independence other than scrambling to find warm bodies to play for the first couple of years. What matters much more is establishing a long-term rotation of annual (or at least regular) opponents within the first 5 years that provides some year-to-year scheduling stability. You now see BYU always playing Utah, Utah State, Boise State and an FCS school at a minimum, so it becomes much more manageable to fill in the rest of the schedule once that's established. It's unreasonable to expect that right off the bat, though. BYU was flying by the seat of its pants in scheduling for the first few years and had to agree to some 2-for-1s that they probably wouldn't agree to now.

Congrats to UConn.

Also, congrats to the haters. This scheduling inconvenience will force them to be creative in new ways!

(09-19-2019 09:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 08:28 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 06:57 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

It's not that we want UConn football to fail. But we're looking at the situation, and UConn's administration seems to be okay with UConn football failing. UConn made a conference move without securing a place or a future for their football program. As if the FBS football program is disposable.

We're less than a year away from the 2020 football season, and UConn is short 2 FBS home games, plus a bunch of road games. Looking at FBSchedules.com, there are only 15 FBS programs with openings of any kind. 7 of those 15 schools don't have FCS games scheduled, and usually play FCS teams. 5 of the remaining 8 have an opening because they play at Hawaii and are allowed a 13th game. The other three are UCF, TCU and SMU. TCU and SMU are probably playing each other, and TCU is probably playing an FCS game rather than traveling to UConn.

So you're trying to convince Mountain West teams to travel to Storrs to play a 13th game, trying to convince UCF to make a trip to Storrs for a nonconference game, continuing the "Civil CONNflict".

Either your administration did that with their eyes open, or they did that not knowing what they were doing.

To be fair, though, this happened to BYU when they announced their independence, too. There's no real prescribed way to transition from being a conference member to independence other than scrambling to find warm bodies to play for the first couple of years. What matters much more is establishing a long-term rotation of annual (or at least regular) opponents within the first 5 years that provides some year-to-year scheduling stability. You now see BYU always playing Utah, Utah State, Boise State and an FCS school at a minimum, so it becomes much more manageable to fill in the rest of the schedule once that's established. It's unreasonable to expect that right off the bat, though. BYU was flying by the seat of its pants in scheduling for the first few years and had to agree to some 2-for-1s that they probably wouldn't agree to now.

Except BYU had a plan for football. "The Project" secured them 2-3 home games a year. 2011, 4 of BYU's 7 home games were agianst WAC schools. Plus they had the Utah series signed. They were working on series with Texas and Notre Dame.

And if everything fell apart, they'd crawl back to the Mountain West.

BYU was in a strong position, and still had to do some 2-for-1s. UConn is not in a strong position, has nothing scheduled for OCtober-November 2020, needs 2 FBS home games, and no obvious partners with openings except UCF.

EDIT: I guess they did have a plan--Football Affiliate in the AAC, or as a fallback the MAC or CUSA. It's just that the plan was wildly unrealistic, and now they are where they are, as the clock ticks louder and louder.

(09-18-2019 09:30 PM)Wedge Wrote:  If limited means "a whole lot of FCS games, but not one for every team in every season", then it's limited.

Just in games that have been publicly announced so far, here are what 6 of the Big Ten teams have scheduled:

Indiana has an FCS game in 4 of the next 5 seasons including this one.
Minnesota has an FCS game in 3 of 4 seasons.
Illinois has one in every even year from 2020 through 2026.
Nebraska has one in every even year from 2020 through 2028.
Maryland has FCS games in 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2025.
Rutgers has FCS games in 2020 and 2021.

I don't have the energy to go spelunking to find out how many of those games were signed before the AD agreement ... only the Minnesota FCS game this year is in an odd year, and if that had already been contracted, that would be everyone in the West in line with a "you can sign an FCS game in the year you have 4 Big Ten home games" rule, which would limit Big Ten FCS games to half the SEC rate. Similarly, if the Rutgers & Maryland 2020 dates were grandfathered, the rest of those would be in the years Big Ten East schools have 4 Big Ten home games.

Indiana is the one that really sticks out as playing FCS schools at close to an SEC rate.

Getting schools like Maryland, Rutgers, BC, Pitt, and Syracuse on a home and home basis won’t be hard for UConn, they just shouldn’t expect to have games with all of them every single year.

If I’m UConn I would be out there trying to secure long term series with Army, UMass, Buffalo, and Temple. Get those 4 and that’s a quarter of your schedule solved. Toss in Liberty, NMSU, an FCS game, and one or two money games and most of your schedule is taken care of.

(09-19-2019 06:57 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

I've posted this before, but as a UC fan I don't really have a problem with UConn or their fans. Its the people on this board (most of whom are fans of schools other than UConn) that post commentary UConn is too good for schools like UC that get me honked off. UC has handled UConn in FB (and TBH lately in men's hoops) enough over the years. Frank's comment above about how now that UConn is no longer a G5 school they are now elevated to a higher status is a classic example. Not to pick on just Frank, there are several other posters on this board who routinely do the same. This, in my opinion, is why UConn gets a hard time on this board from fans of programs like UC, UCF, USF, Memphis, Houston, etc.

(09-19-2019 08:28 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(09-19-2019 06:57 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Regarding Frank the Tank's phrasing "I believe that people automatically assuming that this is a death knell for UConn," ...

... my gut feeling is that a good number of these folks genuinely want UConn football to fail more so than they actually assume that it will due to independence.

The level of UConn dislike that sometimes is evident on this board is unfortunate.

It's not that we want UConn football to fail. But we're looking at the situation, and UConn's administration seems to be okay with UConn football failing. UConn made a conference move without securing a place or a future for their football program. As if the FBS football program is disposable.

We're less than a year away from the 2020 football season, and UConn is short 2 FBS home games, plus a bunch of road games. Looking at FBSchedules.com, there are only 15 FBS programs with openings of any kind. 7 of those 15 schools don't have FCS games scheduled, and usually play FCS teams. 5 of the remaining 8 have an opening because they play at Hawaii and are allowed a 13th game. The other three are UCF, TCU and SMU. TCU and SMU are probably playing each other, and TCU is probably playing an FCS game rather than traveling to UConn.

So you're trying to convince Mountain West teams to travel to Storrs to play a 13th game, trying to convince UCF to make a trip to Storrs for a nonconference game, continuing the "Civil CONNflict".

Either your administration did that with their eyes open, or they did that not knowing what they were doing.

I don't view the UConn administration as being "okay" with the football program to fail. Rather, I think it had the opportunity to ensure and preserve the long-term health of its Olympic sports (namely, basketball) in a power conference basketball league, at the expense of more work and creativity in scheduling for football.

I 100% agree with Frank when UConn fans (and their school) view all G5 opponents the same, whether that is a UCF, a Boise State, or an ECU, etc. At the end of the day, the opponents don't matter if you are consistently losing, and UConn Football was in too deep a hole to ever get out to get back to the top of the AAC in football being on an island and consistently competing against the Florida twins, Cincinnati (Ohio) and ECU (NC) for recruits.

I do think UConn Football will survive (and even improve) as an FBS Independent. Even when they originally were brought up to FBS, they were able to schedule P5 schools like Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Miami, Vanderbilt, Iowa State, Rutgers, Boston College, Louisville, Indiana, NC State and Wake Forest - and that was when they were transitioning in from FCS. If they get a few of those games per year, along with a host of programs from with the G5 (and Liberty/UMass), they will be fine.

CliftonAve have you been to a game at the Rent?

It might be better now but 10-15 years ago they earned the rep for good reason.

(09-20-2019 08:50 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  CliftonAve have you been to a game at the Rent?

It might be better now but 10-15 years ago they earned the rep for good reason.

The rep on this board of being to good for UC, Houston, UCF, etc.? UC was being UConn in FB 10-15 years ago--- we were beating them then too.

Little bit more about UConn/UMass scheduling....

https://www.masslive.com/umassfootball/2...-much.html

Quote:The Minutemen and UConn aren’t scheduled to play in 2022, but with the Huskies becoming an independent in football, the schools are exploring an annual game. Bamford said he’d consider moving some games around to get that rivalry the schedule that season. Games ate already scheduled for 2019-2021.

Remember when UMass supposedly would never consider adjusting their schedule to work a UConn game in?

(09-20-2019 12:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Little bit more about UConn/UMass scheduling....

https://www.masslive.com/umassfootball/2...-much.html

Quote:The Minutemen and UConn aren’t scheduled to play in 2022, but with the Huskies becoming an independent in football, the schools are exploring an annual game. Bamford said he’d consider moving some games around to get that rivalry the schedule that season. Games ate already scheduled for 2019-2021.

Remember when UMass supposedly would never consider adjusting their schedule to work a UConn game in?

I believe it was "UMass won't adjust the 2020 schedule to help UCONN schedule more games that season" and not "UMass won't consider adding UCONN to future seasons"