(10-31-2023 09:04 PM)Comet Wrote:  Yeah SMU is trending in the right direction but that schedule of 11 P4 teams next season is going to be rough. I’ll be happy at 5-6 wins…

2024 ACC Schedule
Home: Boston College, Cal, Florida State, Pitt
Road: At Duke, At Louisville, At Stanford, At Virginia

Non-Conference: BYU, Houston Christian, TCU, at Vanderbilt



I don't know. Many of these teams are terrible this year. FSU is the only real heavy weight and they're at home. Duke and Louisville are good this year but maybe not next year.

(10-31-2023 07:40 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  We lost our coach and our roster got gutted. Can we have a little leeway here??

Nah, we love to pile on.

Seems like all these schedules are being debuted one after the other.

(10-31-2023 07:11 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-31-2023 07:07 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  Great post.

The implication I draw from it is that we shouldn't take claims from undefeated or near-undefeated G5 seriously. When a G5 teams goes 12-0 or 11-1 or something, and its fans claim they are being "robbed" of a chance to compete in the CFP playoffs because they are ranked #10 or something, we should tell them to just set on down.

Football is a combat sport. There should be divisions based on weight and size and depth. Probably based on money spent as well. Within the FBS there likely should be 3 tiers. To borrow from boxing: Super Heavy Weights, Heavy Weights, and Middle Weights. Division II and III would be Bantam Weight and Fly Weight. Kids that are 6'2'' and 6'3'' and weigh 250 lbs have no business going up against those who are 6'4" and 6'5" who weigh 350lbs. And backs which are 6' 185 - 200 lbs should not be competing with those which are 6'2" and 250lbs. It's simply a matter of physics. I missed my last two years of peewee football because I was both too tall and too heavy to compete with the smaller kids my age. In High School I had to play up to larger kids, and against smaller ones. A fun game was one where I played against someone my size. I felt like a bully playing the smaller ones, and a victim playing the larger ones. One night in a game where there were puddles of ice on the ground, I had to switch from right tackle on offense to left tackle because the mayor's kid was crying. The opponent's left defensive end was 6'5" and 350 lbs in high school. His teammates called him Tiny. The saving grace was that Tiny was slow. He beat me black and blue but he never made a tackle on a play to my side. I couldn't push him out of the way but I sure as hell could get between him and the hole the ball carrier was using as a running lane. 17 degree temperatures, ice on the field, and Tiny made for one of the more miserable games I ever played in. I blocked a punt in that game and damn near got a concussion because the ball when it left the punter's foot caught me right under the chin and it was wet, heavy and cold. Since the ball went under me I was at the bottom of the dog pile for the ball. We had smudge pots on the sideline and you had to rotate in front of it to keep both your front and back from making you shake from the cold. The only game that was worse, was at least played against a team which was our equal in size and speed. 102 degrees in an afternoon game. It was the only loss I experienced where the entire opposing team came to our locker room to commiserate the experience. It was in the days when drinking water was forbidden and they gave us salt tablets to replenish what we lost in sweat. The only score of the game came over our defensive left tackle who literally passed out on the play from exhaustion (one of several on both teams to do so). One of their players went on to be a center for Auburn, mostly on special teams, and was best friends with one of my roommates at Auburn who was a running back on our high school team, but back on the depth charts at Auburn. The consensus by those of us who played in that game was that the conditions were too bad for a football game. Most of us played both ways and in pads in that heat and under the sun instead of lights. It was the most miserable sporting event I ever participated in. Had the opposition been larger than we were it would absolutely have been hell!

How did we not have more guys get heat exhaustion or worse back then? When the assistant coaches finally convinced our HC (who had played for the Steelers in the late 1940s) that we needed water during practice, he was deathly afraid we were all going to cramp up; he supervised us as we each drank a small ladle of water from a milk can--"Sip it! Sip it! he'd holler.

He would always preach that he'd never ask us to do anything he wouldn't have done as a player. Then, one day, he told us about an injury he played with when he was with the Steelers (the team doctor told him he'd become sterile if he did, but he ended up with 5 kids). I thought I'd about faint.