College Football: A Depressing Landscape of out of Conference Games

Today is a sad day for College Football fans around the world. It was announced that Illinois and Missouri (SI Article) will no longer play at their neutral site game in St Louis every year. The reason for this, from the SI Article; “Illinois Athletic Director Ron Guenther told The (Champaign) News-Gazette that the neutral site game makes it tough for Illinois to have more than six home games in a season. Most major schools try to play seven.”

I know most of you must be confused. Why is this bad news? Missouri has beaten Illinois every year that this game has been played, they aren’t major programs, so why should this matter? The reason this matters is the REASON they are not playing the game. They aren’t playing the game because they can only have 6 home games a year. If a team like Illinois, who is barely a blip on the casual college football fan’s radar, is concerned about losing 1 home gate a year for a game where they have to share the gate, then what are the chances that powerhouses with huge stadiums (cash cows) like Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and USC are going to pass on a huge home gate for one in which they share?

In order for a school to host at least 7 home games every year, they need to be careful of who they schedule to play. Each season has 12 games. The BCS Conference schools schedule 4 conference road games for each school (Big East sometimes has 3, Pac-10 sometimes has 5). If each school is trying to get 7 home games then that only leaves 1 more non home game on the schedule. If each big school is trying to do this, then that means they are willing to only schedule a home and home series for 1 major out of conference game for a season. The rest of the time these schools will be paying smaller schools to come to their home stadiums.

Who wins in all this? The Universities. The small schools get money from the larger schools that they could never earn with their own gate, and the big schools gain another home game which allows them to roll in large amounts of money.

Who loses? The Fans. For as much as we love to see the Conference rivalries, we love watching big out of conference games. Even though it was a blowout last year, Ohio State vs USC drew great ratings. The Ohio State vs Texas games were proving grounds before they made their march towards the title game. Instead of increasing the number of games like this, we will be increasing the number of Florida vs Citadel games. Of all those games, can you remember anything about any of them? I bet there is only one, Appalachian State upsetting Michigan in the Big House.

I know cash is king, and many out there feel cash is the reason the BCS is still around. But wasn’t the point of the BCS to get out of conference teams to schedule better out of conference games to prove themselves worthy of receiving those first place votes?

I love college football, even with all its black marks, heck I am even one of the 4 people in America who actually likes the BCS. But this is disheartening. College Football is fun for so many reasons; including every game being a playoff game. But when teams can choose an inferior opponent as their playoff adversary, the sport starts losing some of its luster.

(Editor's Note: When Looking for a picture for this Article I used Google Images. I put in "College Football" and look (link) at the second picture to pop up.)

SN follow-up: As much as I rip into most things Pac-10. I have always loved how they play a round robin tournament for football; making sure every team plays every team. I love this and wish there was a way for each conference to do this. However, according to this article (good read, it touches on many points discussed in this piece), the coaches of the Pac-10 want to move to 8 conference games. So not only are we losing out on good out of conference games, we are also missing out on good in conference games.