Ha! You didn't think that this post would be about football, did you?
Happily, college football starts this week (although ND starts the next Saturday). In particular, this is the time of the year when powerhouse football programs shell out big bucks to "cupcake" schools so that the cupcake can come to the powerhouse's school and get trampled. Every school is obligated to play a number of games, usually 8 or 9, within it's conference, and these matchups are somewhat fairly determined, but the remaining 3 or 4 games are pretty much up to each individual school. The cupcake games usually go as planned, but we did have the Appalachian State - Michigan game last year. Notre Dame, on the other hand, is not part of any conference (for football). Thus they have full control of their schedule, but they still play a decent number of tough opponents. I'm still irked by the guy at the Michigan - Ohio State game two years ago that observed my ND attire and made some comment about the pansies ND was playing that year (like Navy, Army, etc). I compared ND's schedule to OSU's sometime later and decided that ND's was slightly tougher (but it was way too late to make a point).
Also, I'm going to tattle on some of the big schools that play 12 regular season games but have either 7 or 8 (!) games at home. Also, most of these teams play at least one cupcake team:
7: Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Texas, West Virginia, Texas Tech, and Kansas
8: LSU, Clemson, Florida State, Missouri, Louisville
As much as I hate USC (and I do), they are using their three non-conference games to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Virginia this year, which is pretty respectable. Still, I hope they go 0-12.
I didn't do the research for this, I got it from an ESPN writer who produces lengthy but somewhat interesting missives on football each week during the season.
Finally: I bought and was actually able to setup a wireless router today, so I got to type this while sitting on the couch. Hike!
12 years ago
3 comments:
Yeah, the beginning of the season is always a little lame. Aside from playing USC, we're due to knock down YSU, Ohio U, and Troy University before we start our conference play. Sure, there's something to be said for Jim Tressel throwing Ohio teams a bone, but it's still always a slow start.
What? No mention of Kentucky football? Fine, I will discuss them myself: Looks like 7 homes games for us. Plus, 4 of our games are against top 25 teams! (P.S. I hope USC goes 0-12 as well)
Sorry I didn't mention UK. The list of teams with seven home games came from that article, so there are probably more teams. I noticed that Hope actually has 5 home, 6 away. ND has done the 7-5 home-away thing before, and I read that their plan for the future is actually to do 7 home, 4 away, and one at a neutral site (they're playing Washington in San Antonio in a couple year - I don't know why). All the college stuff is strange compared to the balanced rigidity of the NFL, although the fairness there satisfies me more.
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