Schlabach pulls a Schlabach

[The Ancient Enemy]

This guy has been the biggest clown in college football coverage since day one. We've all worked with people like Schlabach: people who are so beyond retarded that you don't even want to argue with them, they just make your head tired with frustration. I very rarely ever read his stuff because it is full of so many holes. But I couldn't resist temptation when I saw he was talking about Penn State.

Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn State and Wisconsin hail from the Big Ten, but you wouldn't know it by glancing at their nonconference schedules. Combined, they play five FCS opponents, five smaller directional schools and only three opponents from BCS conferences (and that includes Syracuse twice). The five schools combined play only four non-Big Ten road games, and Michigan and Penn State don't play a single nonconference game away from home. Indiana plays at Akron and Virginia. Northwestern plays at Syracuse. Wisconsin plays at Hawaii. No wonder Penn State coach Joe Paterno didn't want Notre Dame in the Big Ten. Why would he want to give up playing Akron, Syracuse, Temple and FCS opponent Eastern Illinois at home?

1. Listen. The PSU/Syracuse rivalry was renewed in about 2004 or 2005, set up for 2008 and 2009. In 04 or 05, people thought Greg Robinson (who had great success as a coordinator at Texas) was going to make Syracuse a top-level BE team. He proved that, in his first stint as a HC, he was not a good enough recruiter to right that ship. See, here's the thing... these OOC BCS schedules are nothing but pure luck. What if USC was going 3-8 right now, and OSU had them scheduled for 2009? All of a sudden that matchup sucks. 4 or 5 years ago, everyone thought Syracuse would be pretty decent. Is it Penn State's fault that Syracuse sucks? Is it their fault that they'd know that Syracuse would be this bad now? You can't acknowledge that these games are scheduled in advance and then fault the teams for playing eachother years later. Now, is the rest of the PSU OOC schedule bad? You better believe it.

2. Listen. If Notre Dame was in the Big Ten, they would be a conference game with home and home matchups. Instead of 2 teams rotating off the B10 schedule, 3 would. They would still play 4 OOC games, just like everyone else does except the Pac-10. This is common sense, it is not a stretch to perceive this. If I could take the Lord's name in vain right here, and not get kicked off the site, I would.

3. Anybody who hasn't already pushed the B10 aside for 2009 is a fool.

[deliverance]

Schlabach should stick with soap operas. I agree with some of his points here, but overall the guy is an idiot. I can't imagine he will be with ESPN too much longer.

[The Ancient Enemy]

Before Mark Sclabach writes this stuff, maybe he should take a look at where Akron and Hawaii were 3 years ago. Brookhart's name was mentioned for BCS gigs because he was doing so well, and AT Hawaii was this "oh, you don't wanna go there" home atmosphere. They also played in a BCS game a year later.

The point is, the Big Ten DOES have the weakest OOC scheduling, but there's a lot of bad luck here, too. 3 years ago Syracuse was supposed to be good by now. I guess everyone has forgotten this. Hawaii was ramping up bigtime. I guess we all forgot that, too. Virginia was, and still is, a respectable OOC game.

You can make fun of the I-AA games, but you can't fault WiscoNsin for going TO Hawaii or for Syracuse and UVA being down, 3 years later.

[El-Moldo]

So now we're blaming team's ooc schedules on bad luck? Why not say it's an act of God?

[The Ancient Enemy]

What else is it if you put a BCS team on your OOC schedule and they drop off in the meantime? What if Iowa went 0-12 last season and is projected to go 2-10 this year? This would be after the Iowa - Pitt series was scheduled, after Iowa beat LSU in a bowl game. Is this still a good OOC game for Pitt?

See, you can say "Kentucky scheduled Akron" but then you tell Akron "holy crap, you guys have a tough OOC schedule". It's all garbage in the end. 3 years from now San Jose State might win the national championship.

The only people who should be complaining are the fans who bought the tickets.

[The Ancient Enemy]

See, you make these conferences like the MAC and Sun Belt into I-A conferences, the same level as Ohio State and Oklahoma. But they are NOT the same level. Those conferences, because of the BCS, are treated as second class citizens. You want the revenue they bring in, but then you don't want anyone scheduling them. In addition to that, when they ARE better than expected, you don't want them to have a chance to win anything.

[deliverance]

Syracuse hasn't had a winning record since 2001. I'm sure PSU scheduled them around 2006 or 2007, so they had at least 5 losing seasons in a row when PSU scheduled them. Yes, they should have been better by this point, but it's not like PSU thought they were scheduling an up and coming team at that time since it had been at least 5 years since they had a winning record. It's not like they are going after teams that were winning BCS bowls and then they just fell off the map.

[The Ancient Enemy]

The Syracuse home and home was finalized in 2001 or 2002.

Keep in mind PSU and Alabama are supposed to be playing this year. Last year, they had to scramble to find an opponent and got Oregon State late.

[deliverance]

I can't say too much about any team's out of conference schedule this season since Texas has a very weak one itself this year. Arkansas backing out really hurt their schedule, but the Big 12 is strong enough to make up for it unless USC and Florida would happen to go undefeated.

[vman]

The Syracuse home and home was finalized in 2001 or 2002.

Keep in mind PSU and Alabama are supposed to be playing this year. Last year, they had to scramble to find an opponent and got Oregon State late.

Holy SpinMaster.......scramble?? They paid Oregon St. to come to the Beave, replacing Arkinsas St so they wouldn't have a schedule worse than 1119th in the country.