It's Cupcake Week in the Big XII

by Husker Mike on Sep 3, 2008 10:41 PM CDT in Nebraska Husker Football

What a huge week for the Big XII conference in football! Look at these matchups!

Southeast Missouri State @ Missouri
Cincinatti @ Oklahoma
Texas @ Texas El-Paso
Texas Tech @ Nevada
Louisiana Tech @ Kansas
San Jose State @ Nebraska
Oklahoma State @ Houston
Eastern Washington @ Colorado
Kent State @ Iowa State
Texas A&M @ New Mexico
Northwestern Louisiana State @ Baylor

Whew! Takes your breath away, doesn't it? Here are the Sagarin ratings for this weekend's opponents: 221, 42, 141, 81, 98, 117, 74, 104, 134, 79, 179. That's an average opponent rating of 106...and there are only 119 teams in division 1-A (ok, the "Bowl Championship Subdivision").

What a horrible week for Big XII football this weekend. So bad that ABC had to hold their nose and select the least offensive matchup for television (Cincy/Oklahoma).

Extra frosting this week!

I'm sensing another "Instant Classic" for ESPN Classic this weekend.

Oh sure, some people will defend the schedules as saying "everybody does it", or "every year there's a cupcake on the schedule." But does that really make it right?

Absolutely not. In places like Nebraska, where football games have been sold out for over 45 years, people are just going to suck it up and pay for their season tickets. You're not going to risk your season tickets over these matchups. But what about those places where fan support isn't so high? During the broadcast of the Colorado/Colorado State game, a commercial ran on FSN promoting an offer for 4 tickets for $40. (Just for comparison, tickets for this weekend's game between Nebraska-Kearney and Nebraska-Omaha start at $12 each!)

And before it looks like I'm picking on the Big XII, let's look at the rest of college football. Here's what's on your TV this weekend:

Miami-Ohio @ Michigan
Ohio @ Ohio State
BYU @ Washington
Cincinatti @ Oklahoma
Ole Miss @ Wake Forest
Oregon State @ Penn State
San Diego State @ Notre Dame
West Virginia @ East Carolina
Louisiana Tech @ Kansas
South Florida @ Central Florida
Miami @ Florida
Texas @ Texas-El Paso

Other than Miami/Florida, what is there to look forward to this weekend? This weekend's schedule is so bad that ABC has pre-empted "Saturday Night Football" for a NASCAR race. When you consider the start of the NFL season and the pennant races in baseball, college football might fall to fourth place on the minds of the television viewer this weekend.

How does this situation get fixed? It's simple really, and it starts with the BCS. Return strength of schedule into the formula, like it was originally set up. It was removed when sportswriters went into an uproar after the 2000 and 2001 seasons when sportswriters went into a tizzy after Florida State and Nebraska went into the title game because of their stronger strength of schedule.

Restoring strength of schedule to the BCS formula will cause some issues at first; schedules are set up years in advance and inevitably some team will get edged out because their schedule was so weak. If that's what it takes to eliminate weeks like this from the schedule, so be it.

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Comments

There are a couple of good games

Ole Miss- Wake Forest looks to be a better game now after Ole Miss’ showing this Saturday. And despite our team’s let down last weekend, Oregon State- Penn State should be better than advertised. At least its a match-up of two BCS conference schools in the top 3rd of their respective conferences. Miami/Florida won’t be that great of a game, at least its a game of 2 powerhouse programs. West Virginia- East Carolina is intriguing just because of ECU’s beating of VT last weekend. Louisiana Tech beat Mississippi State (8-5 last year) so LTU v Kansas could be interesting.

Just because there are no marquee match-ups this week doesn’t mean there isn’t a bunch of games that mean nothing. Very rarely do you have weeks of more than 5 Top 25 match ups until conference play starts.

by The VD Special on Sep 4, 2008 12:15 AM CDT reply actions

I'm not sure they're "good"...

…but rather not so bad. As you point out WVU-ECU might be ok, as well as OSU-PSU. But there aren’t really any good matchups. Florida-Miami might have been in the past. And I forgot about the US Open; college football might end up fifth on the sporting menu this weekend.

by Husker Mike on Sep 4, 2008 6:47 AM CDT reply actions

US Open

is that golf or tennis? Or what is it?

I’m not even joking…… I really don’t know because I pay no attention to that stuff.

Sad fact is, there isn’t another sport that competes for my attention like football. Maybe college baseball, but that’s never televised and it’s the wrong season (funny how that works out, eh?)

That’s probably the root of the problem, isn’t it?

Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!

by Jon Johnston on Sep 4, 2008 7:17 AM CDT up reply actions

It’s gotta be tennis. The golf version of the National Open is in June.

We'll carry the banner high!

by TB on Sep 4, 2008 2:18 PM CDT up reply actions

You know

It’s not that there are other sports that’s the distraction.

I’m looking at the TV schedule, and while there’s games I might watch on it, what I’m really thinking is that I’ll take time and go to my daughter’s soccer game on Saturday. Maybe even a pool party and because it’s Minnesota, there won’t be any college football anywhere.

That sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it? But that’s the problem with crappy programming. You discover there are other things you can be doing that don’t involve the tube. At all. It’s dangerous for college football.

I’ll have a follow up on this later. Because we have two more weeks of crap to deal with – idle, and then New Mexico State.

Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!

by Jon Johnston on Sep 4, 2008 11:12 AM CDT up reply actions