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Topic: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling

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medinabuckeye1

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What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« on: June 03, 2019, 03:36:12 PM »
Over on @Cincydawg 's thread about tough 2019 Football schedule @MichiFan87 made a comment about the two extra conference games involved in going to 20 conference games mostly displacing crappy guarantee games. 

It got me thinking about what the scheduling priority SHOULD be for AD's.  I don't mean the question here to be what would we as fans like it to be in a perfect world, I mean to ask what it should be for the AD's in the real world. 

I made this chart using the following four links:
https://www.onthebanks.com/2016/7/17/12208322/ranking-the-big-ten-stadiums-michigan-penn-state-ohio-state-rutgers-maryland-iowa-wisconsin
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/Reports/attend/2017.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_basketball_arenas
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/Attendance/2017.pdf
School 2017 avg Cap % 2017 avg Cap % Football-BB %
Penn State 106,707 106,572 100.13% 6,991 15,261 45.81%54.32%
Ohio State 107,495 104,944 102.43% 12,324 18,809 65.52%36.91%
Rutgers 39,749 52,454 75.78% 4,679 8,000 58.49%17.29%
Minnesota 44,358 50,805 87.31% 10,308 14,625 70.48%16.83%
Michigan 111,589 107,601 103.71% 11,121 12,707 87.52%16.19%
Iowa 66,337 70,585 93.98% 12,547 15,500 80.95%13.03%
Nebraska 89,798 86,047 104.36% 15,427 15,147 101.85%2.51%
Wisconsin 78,824 80,321 98.14% 17,286 17,249 100.21%-2.08%
Michigan State 72,485 75,005 96.64% 14,797 14,797 100.00%-3.36%
Illinois 39,429 60,670 64.99% 11,381 16,618 68.49%-3.50%
Purdue 47,884 57,236 83.66% 13,819 14,848 93.07%-9.41%
Indiana 43,953 52,929 83.04% 16,363 17,472 93.65%-10.61%
Maryland 39,643 51,082 77.61% 16,628 17,950 92.64%-15.03%
Northwestern 35,853 47,330 75.75% 7,008 7,039 99.56%-23.81%

My thinking on this is mostly for schools like PSU, tOSU, M, and IA where football attendance is already at-or-near capacity while BB attendance lags significantly.  In that case I think those schools should pursue a policy of having fewer but better basketball games to get closer to capacity. 
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MichiFan87

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2019, 03:55:10 PM »
It depends on various factors, but for Michigan.....

Football - As I've said before, keep getting a top non-con series (Washington, UCLA, Texas, and Oklahoma are upcoming) for each year and get the best guarantee games possible instead of settling for MAC games. Unfortunately, Michigan's big non-con game options for 2028 and beyond are increasingly limited the longer they wait, and it appears that they're reverting to scheduling MAC games instead of the like of Oregon State, Colorado, UCF, SMU, BYU, UNLV, Hawaii, Air Force, and Army.

Basketball - Get in the best non-con tournaments possible, which Michigan generally has (Atlantis this and previous years, along with Maui, and games in NYC.... Last year was an exception), schedule another high-profile non-con series aside from the ACC Challenge, especially in years not in the Gavitt Games (under Beilein, they got series with Kansas, Arizona, Texas, Arkansas, SMU, Connecticut, South Carolina, UCLA, Utah, Iowa State, and even Duke outside the Challenge.... Oregon starting next year, too), and fill out the schedule with decent guarantee games (Michigan is still bad at avoiding 250+ RPI teams unfortunately).
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FearlessF

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2019, 03:59:16 PM »
I'm not sure what you are after here, but the Husker's AD knows that 7 home games is an absolute must as a revenue generator in Football.  So you pay/schedule schools like Akron if needed to get to 7
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medinabuckeye1

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2019, 04:04:14 PM »
I view it roughly the same way for Ohio State.  Ohio State does have a slight advantage as compared to Michigan for Basketball scheduling because the school is located IN a large city which *SHOULD* help in selling tickets.  We aren't seeing much of that in the stats I posted above but part of that is that I think 2017 was a particularly bad year for tOSU BB. 

What I think is practical and I would like to see as a fan is this:
In football:
1)  Accept playing "only" 6.5 home games per year in football. 
2)  Every year's OOC schedule should be made up of one road or neutral and two home games
3)  Continue playing a "marquee" OOC opponent every year
4)  Fill in the rest of the OOC road games with two-for-one deals with decent opponents preferably in locations where either there are a lot of tOSU alums or in fertile recruiting areas. 

In Basketball:
1)  Add at least one additional high-quality H&H series each year, preferably two more (one home, one away game per year). 
2)  Get into more of the tournaments referenced by @MichiFan87 above.  The Buckeyes have been in a few, but not enough. 
3)  Consider playing one game a year in Cleveland during the student's winter break. 

I think that scarcity is a huge asset in marketing.  The steps outlined above would decrease the quantity and increase the quality of tickets availability this contributing to scarcity and sales. 
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medinabuckeye1

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #4 on: June 03, 2019, 04:09:28 PM »
Quote from: FearlessF on June 03, 2019, 03:59:16 PM
I'm not sure what you are after here, but the Husker's AD knows that 7 home games is an absolute must as a revenue generator in Football.  So you pay/schedule schools like Akron if needed to get to 7

From the above chart, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Michigan State are near capacity in both sports so you really can't question what they are doing.  We have seven schools with at least 90% capacity in football:
 - Penn State
 - Ohio State
 - Michigan
 - Iowa
 - Nebraska
 - Wisconsin
 - Michigan State

Then we have seven schools with at least 90% capacity in basketball:
 - Northwestern
 - Maryland
 - Indiana
 - Purdue
 - Michigan State
 - Wisconsin
 - Nebraska

As mentioned: Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Michigan State are on both lists.  Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Iowa are on for football but not basketball.  Purdue, Indiana, Maryland, and Northwestern are on for basketball but not football.  That leaves Rutgers, Minnesota, and Illinois on neither list. 
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FearlessF

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2019, 04:29:40 PM »
for most fan bases.... putting a winning product on the field and/or the court will solve the attendance issue

regardless of schedule
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ELA

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2019, 05:06:53 PM »
Quote from: MichiFan87 on June 03, 2019, 03:55:10 PM
It depends on various factors, but for Michigan.....

Basketball - fill out the schedule with decent guarantee games (Michigan is still bad at avoiding 250+ RPI teams unfortunately).
This is the key that I do not get why teams can't figure out.  You generally can't control if a team you schedule is a decent or blah MAC team.  But you should never be scheduling these SWAC/MEAC/Southland games against teams where best case they are right around #200
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Cincydawg

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2019, 08:47:44 PM »
I want to see 10 P5 games on the football slate each year.  I have a notion that a "down and out program" like say UNC should step it up to 11, and one pastry.  Sign'em up and play serious P5 teams.  It would help attendance and help getting noticed and might help recruiting.  Yes, you might miss out going 6-6, but so what?

Imagine UNC played Oregon and Wisconsin and Texas A&M OOC one year.  Excitement.  

The top level teams have to consider whether an additional P5 would knock them out of the top four.

But play ten anyway.  That only means one more for the B1G.
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OrangeAfroMan

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #8 on: June 03, 2019, 08:56:37 PM »
Okay, so take all of that into consideration, and then imagine if you're a school with an annual neutral-site game.  There's another monkey in your wrench.
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LittlePig

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2019, 10:05:41 PM »
FYI - with Iowa's recent rebuild of its north endzone seating in 2018, the official capacity for Iowa's football stadium is now only 69,250.
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bayareabadger

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #10 on: June 03, 2019, 11:57:24 PM »
Quote from: Cincydawg on June 03, 2019, 08:47:44 PM
I want to see 10 P5 games on the football slate each year.  I have a notion that a "down and out program" like say UNC should step it up to 11, and one pastry.  Sign'em up and play serious P5 teams.  It would help attendance and help getting noticed and might help recruiting.  Yes, you might miss out going 6-6, but so what?

Imagine UNC played Oregon and Wisconsin and Texas A&M OOC one year.  Excitement. 

The top level teams have to consider whether an additional P5 would knock them out of the top four.

But play ten anyway.  That only means one more for the B1G.
I have to disagree with you here a little. 

Simply put, there's not much excitement in losing. There is excitement in a big win, but not in bad records. If UNC played that schedule, we'd talk about it all offseason. Tar Heel fans would grow tired of hearing about it. And if they went 0-3, no one would care about the team the rest of the year. If they went 1-2, there'd be some hope because the ACC is drek. If they go 2-1, well, they were a good team all along.

I've watched this sport for a long time, and it's dawned on me that as much as more nuanced fans such as those on here might appreciate the joys of a hard fought loss to a good team, more folks want wins and a team that feels like it has hope. And an understated part of the structure of college football is that hope gets drawn out a little bit longer. 

Allow me to explain.

If my team is a so-so P5, I might still get a 2-1 or 2-2 start. This might just be inflating things, but one third of the way through the season, I'm more engaged. If I have a 1-3 squad or 0-4, might as well start basketball. And if I root for a G5, I might start 1-2 or 0-3, but I have the hope of my team playing more teams at its level. 

As a TV watcher, I wouldn't mind more P5 vs P5, but frankly, I have a remote and can only watch five or so things at once anyway. As an in-stadium attendee, I don't necessarily mind the idea of seeing a team I like do good things. 

Finebaum had a kind of loaded question after some rumbling about the South Carolina schedule. He asked if fans would rather have a soft 9-3 or a hard 7-5. Maybe the erudite fan wants the latter, but most would take the former. A 9-3 team has more buzz than a 7-5 one, in recruiting, in attendance, all that. Shoot, Clemson had one big non-conference and whipped a lot of soft underbelly of the ACC for a few years, and you know what we called them, 10- or 11-win teams. 

One thing that is interesting is we'll have an experiment of this. WVU has 11 P5 games through 2024. 
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Hawkinole

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #11 on: June 04, 2019, 01:19:07 AM »
This is partly a scheduling response, partly not. Iowa has mostly been a great basketball school going back to the 1940s until about 1999.

In the 1970s when Lute Olson coached Iowa, Hawkeye basketball came back from a brief dead zone that lasted about 5-6 years. As the Hawkeyes became great and greater, and the mothers swooned over Lute, an Iowa television network formed. We knew the times and days of the week when games would be on television. And, I had season tickets.

Now there is different time and day of the week for each game. It makes following the games difficult.

When Tom Davis was ousted, which was  20-years ago, about half the fanbase here was pissed, and never got over how you can fire the winningest basketball coach in the hx of Iowa basketball and replace him with Boy Wonder, i.e. Robin, who was a despised Indiana player angling to coach the Hoosiers. This was very upsetting to view. And Boy Wonder had a reputation of being arrogant in Iowa City.

To get back to scheduling, I would say make the times and days of the week for basketball the same day and time each week. This may require going back to regional or state-wide television networks to accomplish predictable scheduling, supplemented by some Big Ten or ESPN coverage. We are busy working. The schedule is too hard to follow. Many of us oldsters are still holding the University of Iowa responsible for what it did 20-years ago.
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Hawkinole

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #12 on: June 04, 2019, 01:25:07 AM »
As for football at Iowa, I would like to see Iowa delete Iowa State from its schedule about 1 year out of 3 and replace ISU with Iowa's traditional nonconference rival, Notre Dame. Well, not going to happen. Just today it was announced the Iowa State - Iowa series is extended through 2025.

The Iowa - Notre Dame series, up until 1968 or 69, when it ended, was usually scheduled in rivalry week in the 1950s and 1960s. I wonder what on earth these people are thinking who run the show at Iowa. Appeasing Iowa State should not be a Hawkeye goal to accomplish, but the administration does a pretty good job of appeasement.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2019, 01:33:07 AM by Hawkinole »
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OrangeAfroMan

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Re: What should be the priorities that guide scheduling
« Reply #13 on: June 04, 2019, 02:27:18 AM »
The state of your program should dictate your scheduling practices.  The Alabamas and Georgias and Texas' and Ohio States should schedule these h&h big-boy games every year.  Because they can.  Because it's not damning.  


But also, just as truthfully, if you're a program like Kansas State in 1988, you should schedule as many wins as humanly possible.  I don't care if you're scheduling deaf & blind schools (no offense) for easy Ws, you need to get in the practice of feeling what it's like to win.  Iowa shouldn't drop ISU in order to go bite of ND, ISU should be the one to drop Iowa in order to go out and schedule a win instead.  
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