College football's opening weekend is a dud. It doesn't have to be | Opinion
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College football’s Week 0 and Week 1 schedules stink.
Let’s first establish that truth.
You could spend the next two weekends lounging in a Tommy Bahama chair, absorbing the last of summer, and you wouldn't miss much.
Labor Day will include just one Top 25 matchup using AP rankings (and none using US LBM Coaches Poll rankings), as college football fails to fully capitalize on a holiday weekend without NFL games.
Trainwreck enthusiasts will be intrigued by Bill Belichick’s encore against TCU in Week 0. Otherwise, the four best games throughout the season’s first two weekends look something like this:
- Memphis at UNLV (Aug. 29)
- Clemson at No. 13 LSU (Sept. 5)
- No. 10 Mississippi vs. Louisville (Sept. 6)
- No. 20 SMU at Florida State (Sept. 7)
That, folks, is what a turd in the punch bowl looks like.
A small portion of this stink bomb can be attributed to bad luck. If Wisconsin could be counted on to perform like it should, instead of imitating Northwestern, then the Badgers’ game against Notre Dame would be better fare. As it is, that game looks like a body-bag matchup.
Mostly, though, this is just the type of early season docket you get when teams steadfastly seek the meekest nonconference schedule allowable. Big Ten and SEC teams are attempting to schedule their way to 10 wins and a playoff bid. That equates to avoiding nonconference risks, wherever possible.
A handful of Big Ten teams, like Indiana, Penn State and Nebraska, don’t even bother playing a Power Four nonconference opponent.
So, if we acknowledge a scheduling problem exists, then how to resolve it?
Two obvious solutions float to the surface:
Option 1. Create a Big Ten-SEC Challenge. It’s been theorized, but never materialized. Call it a challenge, call it a scheduling agreement, or call it a television cash cow, I don’t care about the terminology. Just square up no fewer than a dozen B1G-SEC matchups, sprinkle them throughout Weeks 0, 1 and 2, and oh, mama, fewer people would be listening to Rogan while floating in pools the next few weekends, I’ll guarantee you that much.
Option 2. Implement 10-game conference schedules. Swap out one cupcake. Insert another conference game, to be played early in the season.
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Which option would be better for college football schedule?
Give me a wand and anoint me as galactic overlord — seriously, you should do it — and I’d implement Option 1.
B1G vs. SEC has emerged as one of college football's spiciest, yet still sorely underdeveloped, rivalries. In current form, the rivalry remains mostly relegated to message boards, propaganda wars, and social media barbs. Outside of a handful of postseason matchups, teams from these two super conferences rarely play each other.
When they do (see Ohio State at Texas in Week 2), it's a recipe for prime-time network TV.
Not only does the scarcity of Big Ten-SEC matchups make the playoff selection committee’s job harder, but it also prevents college football’s regular season from reaching its fullest (and richest) potential.
Now, imagine a Week 1 schedule that included Georgia-Indiana, Penn State-Tennessee and Southern Cal-Texas A&M. You wouldn’t leave your couch unless you needed another frosty from the fridge.
Not every matchup would be a barnburner, but a Week 1 battle of brainiacs pitting Vanderbilt against Northwestern would trump Vanderbilt-Austin Peay.
Conference tribalism distinguishes college football from the NFL. Have you ever heard a Chiefs fan chant, “A-F-C! A-F-C!” or watched a Cowboys fans die on a hill that, “My conference is better than your conference!”
Yeah, me either.
Tapping into this spirit of conference loyalty and superiority would transform the early-season schedule.
Cupcake games aren’t sacred. They’re just cop-outs
Cupcake games aren’t new, but they’re not sacred, either.
Teams learned to survive without them. They could do it again.
Consider Auburn’s 1984 schedule. The Tigers opened that season with nonconference bouts against Miami and Texas before playing Florida State and Georgia Tech later in the season.
You’d never see a nonconference schedule like that nowadays. Too bad.
Fast forward more than 30 years, and the 2016 season started with what some described as the best Labor Day lineup ever, packed with nonconference matchups like Notre Dame-Texas, Ole Miss-Florida State, UCLA-Texas A&M, Georgia-North Carolina, Oklahoma-Houston and Alabama-USC.
That came during the four-team playoff era, when the playoff-or-bust mentality didn’t exist to the degree it does today, and schools accepted the risk of a marquee clash in Week 1. Anyway, the truest path to four-team playoff selection was winning a conference championship, so teams embraced a Labor Day weekend nonconference game against a Top 25 opponent.
I seriously doubt growing the playoff to 24 teams, like the Big Ten desires, would beef up nonconference scheduling, either.
When the playoff expanded from four to 12, and it became easier than ever to make the bracket, schools began to weaken their nonconference schedules, not stiffen them.
What do you think would happen if the playoff swelled to 24 teams? Too many schools would continue to embrace a seek the meek, beat the meek mentality, knowing 9-3 probably equals a playoff bid.
If institutions are going to dig in and resist beefing up their nonconference schedule, then Option 2 (a 10-game conference schedule) becomes the avenue to enhance the season.
When Big Ten and SEC teams played conference-only schedules in 2020, the absence of State University blowing out Directional School Low-Tech became a silver lining to the pandemic season.
Either option would be better than what college football serves up now.
Go ahead and grab your pool noodle and slather on the SPF 30, because there’s not much good on TV the next couple of weeks. That’s the rotten truth.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College football's opening weekend is a dud. It doesn't have to be | Opinion
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