Thursday, August 14, 2014

All college football schedules now written in pencil

The rumored is now official as BC and Ohio State pushed back their series to 2023 and 2024. It is nice to have the games on paper but I doubt it ever happens. Nine years is an eternity in any sport, but especially one like college football. The rules, philosophies and leaders change so often, you can't count on anything beyond a season or two. BC and Ohio State will certainly have new football coaches and ADs by the time the series is played. Any of those four people could kill the series as it approaches for a myriad of reasons. I am disappointed but not heart broken. I don't care about playing Ohio State. I care about playing interesting and historically strong teams. The good news about college football's constant chaos is that there will be good games in the near future.

The biggest unknown with regards to college football scheduling is the new Power 5. The majority of coaches want to keep scheduling to just the Power 5. That's where the most TV and ticket money is too, so I assume ADs and TV executives will follow. That's a good thing for fans. Instead of a series of MAC or FCS games, all of our out of conference games would be against respectable teams. And the good news is that it won't cost BC a ton of money. If it is mandated by the new rules of the Power 5, scheduling good games will actually become easier. That might lead to some random games (BC vs Mississippi State! or BC vs Texas Tech!), but any type of Power 5 team would be an improvement over some of the random teams we've hosted in recent years.

The only downside of the Power 5 mandate is that we would lose out on some traditional opponents like Army or the chance to play newly scholarshiped FCS teams like Fordham or Holy Cross. But give me exciting football over nostalgia any day.

Outside of mandates, the other unknown is the ACC's potential ninth game. But as I've written before, that is probably the conference's last card to play.

For now all Bates and Addazio can do is work the phones and look for good schedule opportunities in the next two seasons. Beyond that it is just a waiting game. With the way this also shakes out we might end of playing Ohio State well before 2023.

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