Out of conference scheduling has been a hot button issue in college football for years. Major powers cut substantial checks for small FBS schools or FCS schools to come take a beating. One team gets a win, the other gets paid, and usually everything goes according to plan.
Weak college football scheduling leads to somewhat embarrassing Saturday
Running clocks, short quarters, and a whole lot of beatdowns were the fruit of some truly terrible scheduling.
In the later stages of blowouts, fans will joke that a running clock would be nice, or to just end the game early. Well, both of those actually happened on Saturday. There was a running clock for roughly the last 20 minutes of the Louisville-FIU game, and Miami-Savannah State featured a 12-minute fourth quarter.
All in all, it was a big day for #BEATEMDOWNS:
So the 4 FBS teams with 70+ today (so far) = most in a single day over last 10 seasons. Only day with even 3 teams was … last Saturday
— Holly Anderson (@HollyAnderson) September 22, 2013
This looks bad, especially on a day where the schedule was so bereft of quality matchups, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the giant-killers have made a lot of hay in the first weeks of the 2013 season.
The bottom line here is that college football programs need to start scheduling better, or else days like this Saturday will become a lot more common. The Big Ten has already declared a fatwa on scheduling FCS teams in the future, but that doesn’t exactly fix the problem. Teams won’t start scheduling more adventurous competition until it aligns with their best interests. I’s more important to have a shiny record full of wins over tomato cans than to have a loss or two on a schedule that was genuinely challenging, and until voters start thinking otherwise, teams will continue to stack up as many home games as possible against weak opponents. And perhaps worst of all, we’ll complain about how bad it is, but still sit there and watch it anyway.
This scheduling model may work out in your favorite team’s favor, but it’s not making the first few Saturdays of the season easier to watch.
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