I would think he was paying ASU a compliment by suggesting that you guys are much better than most of the Div. I schools out there. And we are disappointed in our athletic department because we were told they were scheduling a BCS conference school. We don't mean to impune ASU when we say that, but we also don't wish to hear about our weak scheduling down the stretch next year.
Yes, I am disappointed. Teams like Texas, USC, OSU, Nebraska, are all playing games against BIG name BCS schools. Even though Notre Dame was absolutely putrid last year, USC gets more credit for playing tham than LSU will for playing a 1-AA school (even though App St. would have beat ND soundly). As unfair as it is, that's the way it works. Our athletic department knows this. They KNOW that putting a big-time BCS school on the schedule boosts you up huge in the polls at the end of the year, yet they don't schedule them. Yeah, we slipped up, no doubt about it. We finished the season with the same record as a handful of other teams, and SOS put us in the game. If the same scenario happens again (except with 0 or 1 loss), I don't want to be left out simply because we scheduled all small schools, and no BCS teams. Sure, I'll explain. It means that in head to head games, I think App St. could beat half the teams currently playing in D-1A. I think App state is better than at least half of D-1. In fact, of our 4 OOC games, y'all are probably the best of the 4. But because of the 1-AA tag, y'all will be viewed as the weakest. Fair or not, that is the way the system works. And because the system works that way, I hate the way our Athletic Department has handled our scheduling.
LSU blew nothing. We got the game we needed. LSU must have 8 home games to pay for the program. Home and home with TT is not an option. Texas Tech is in Texas, they have a lot of fans in Houston, too. The difference would be that they teams would have split the take 50-50 in a neutral site. Texas Tech gets more cash than playing in BR and LSU takes less of a cash hit for playing in Texas.
LSU plays multiple big-name BCS schools like Florida, Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama every year!
No, they WANT 8 home games every year. Only played 7 last year, and they ended up just fine financially. Same with '02 and '03. So did Auburn in '04, yet they couldn't even jump USC or OU in the computers(all of which use some form of SOS in their rankings) Why? Because while AU was playing La Tech, The Citadel, and UL-M (sounds an awful lot like our scheduling habits), USC was playing 3 BCS schools (Va Tech, Colorado St, and ND).
USC and OU had a better preseason ranking than auburn if I remember correctly. If auburn was ranked higher preseason they would played for the ball.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/stewart_mandel/02/12/lsu.appstate/index.html apparently, espn is in talks with both school to make this game into a primetime game
I'm talking about the computer polls. There is no preseason poll there. The computer take your entire body of work into account. Where you started, and when you lost are irrelevant to them. Which is why we DID jump USC in '03. We started behind them, and lost after they did.
Lot of interesting points here. I doubt anyone thinks App St. is not a good opponent, but regardless, this year the public perception of our schedule will be less than we would we like. How quickly we forget the crap OSU took for their schedule, last year. Did it change the fact that they were a good team? No. Did people say they didn't deserve to be in the NCG? Yes. The flip side existed for us, primarily because we played/dominated Va Tech. It did get us over the hump. You can say, "if we take care of business in the SEC, we will be fine", but that is not true, as Auburn found out. You can also argue Auburn away by saying that you can't jump a team in front of you in the polls unless they lose. Obviously after this past year, when we did that very thing, you cannot say that is true either. From a season ticket holder stand point, the home schedule is disappointing as a whole. As a fan in general, it will put us in a position of having to defend scheduling "cupcakes" when other marquis programs are at least attempting to schedule "bigger names". Does this put our NC hopes in jeopardy? Of course it does, but we are strong enough to compete with anyone in the country and should not shirk that opportunity. Champions want to play the best to measure themselves accurately. I doubt you could find any players on our team that would prefer the current schedule as opposed to playing another top 10 opponent as they did last year.
