Non-Conference Scheduling rumors

[byu71]

That's exactly how I feel. I don't like it if we only have six home games. Maybe there's one more that Holmoe has for us, but I'm not holding my breath.

Being the tight wad and value shopper I am, I am not enthused about spending $160 for tickets to a scrimage. Especially since I won't be able to sell them at even an 80% discount.

[Cougarmandias]

It's OK with me if you don't believe, so I am feeling pretty unburdened. In any event I don't know any real specifics, only the bottom line conclusion, so I'd have to speculate, just like you guys are. Given that, I am not sure what I can possibly say that will satisfy you all.

You could offer a plausible speculation. I have no real beef against the U and would be willing to entertain alternate possibilities. But since no one has been able to think of any . . .

Also, your new avatar is creepy.

[The_Douger]

Being the tight wad and value shopper I am, I am not enthused about spending $160 for tickets to a scrimage. Especially since I won't be able to sell them at even an 80% discount.

We're getting tickets again this year. I only went to 2 games last year, after we sold our tickets, and that worked out pretty well.

That might just be one I don't attend or give the tickets away.

I doubt my tickets are as expensive as yours so I hear what you're saying. There's enough fun games next year to make up for it.

[Indy Coug]

Being the tight wad and value shopper I am, I am not enthused about spending $160 for tickets to a scrimage. Especially since I won't be able to sell them at even an 80% discount.

Actually, that game is free, they are just spreading out the $186.67 cost for the other 6 games.

[LA Ute]

Do you also wonder why Coke management doesn't offer to help Pepsi out when they have a couple bad quarters in a row? Do you assume it's a moralistic reason? ie they don't like it when Coke supporters act unruly at Pepsi fundraisers?

Hey, you guys are making the accusation. In Western society, those who accuse have to support their accusation. JIC and I are merely saying it ain't necessarily so. Tell us why it is so.

[Indy Coug]

Hey, you guys are making the accusation. In Western society, those who accuse have to support their accusation. JIC and I are merely saying it ain't necessarily so. Tell us why it is so.

I thought you said you were leaving this thread.

[byu71]

Actually, that game is free, they are just spreading out the $186.67 cost for the other 6 games.

Knowing BYU, as with any other money making organization, my bet is the ticket prices will go up this year because of the schedule. With the home schedule coming up I have no problem with them doing that and will gladly pay the extra. I won't be enthused about paying for a 7th game at increased prices against a dog.

What will be interesting is if the schedule for 2014 stays the same, will ticket prices will go back down?

[Pelado]

Hey, you guys are making the accusation. In Western society, those who accuse have to support their accusation. JIC and I are merely saying it ain't necessarily so. Tell us why it is so.

Accusation? I guess Utah's been accused of looking out for their own self-interest. So you must be saying that Utah may be too altruistic for that?

[Scratch]

I'm not 100% opposed to playing a 1-AA team as part of a 13 game, 7 home game schedule. I just wish we could schedule the damn thing as the first game of the season. It would give us a "preseason" game to work the kinks out so we would be better prepared to take on our first actual opponent.

This is the difficulty with the ND/Texas/Wisconsin/Nebraska/Mississippi/West Virginia scheduling trend. If BYU is going to keep scheduling road or neutral games without corresponding home games you're going to have to start scheduling at least 1 D-1AA team per year just to get to 6 home games. This is why the MTSU agreement was significant; if BYU can't use Sun Belt-level teams to even out the schedule then the only remaining option is D-1AA. It will also be interesting to see how USU handles the relationship going forward, as that will impact BYU's ability to even up the home slate.

[Cougarmandias]

Hey, you guys are making the accusation. In Western society, those who accuse have to support their accusation. JIC and I are merely saying it ain't necessarily so. Tell us why it is so.

Accusation? I thought you said this wasn't a moralistic issue.

In Western society, those who fall back on arguing the burden of proof do so because they don't have actual arguments.

[The_Douger]

I'm pretty skeptical of us continuing to get 2/1 with USU.

[Mormon Red Death]

I'm pretty skeptical of us continuing to get 2/1 with USU.

Unless byu still has its stooges in the Athletic dept @ usu I would expect it to go away. Either that or what byu pays them will have to increase dramatically. Due to being the mwc USU will have a byu/utah before leaving the mwc schedule.

Sent from my SGH-T839 using Tapatalk 2

[LA Ute]

OK, I will take a shot at this. Remember that I want the annual rivalry game to continue and am sad it will not continue. I wish the U's leadership would find a different approach.

Here are my speculative thoughts as to how the U. got to its current decision.

Pretend you are David Pershing, the U.'s president. You've been at Utah since 1977 and have a deep understanding of its needs and culture at all levels, and you understand the State of Utah and its unique culture pretty well too -- you've raised your kids there, you've taught thousands of local students as a much-loved and respected engineering professor, and you've generally been part of the community.

Now you're deciding, with your Athletics Director and Special Assistant, on whether to reduce the U.'s level of engagement with BYU in intercollegiate athletics. You decide that it's in the U's best interests to take a step back. You won't stop playing BYU in football, you just won't play every year. You'll play them once annually in basketball. You know this will anger some people but you decide to go ahead anyway.

In addition to the PAC-12 scheduling issues that Chris Hill raises, in making this decision you consider the following:

• You can't win the P.R. war in this case. You're the president of the state's flagship public university and in the eyes of many of the state's citizens (including the state legislature, which supplies a significant amount of your funding) you are an undesirable part of the state's culture and stand in the way of BYU, which is the dominant religion's flagship university. The annual rivalry football game, unlike any other rivalry in the country, is deeply infused with religion and the resulting bitterness. You are the "bad guy" in the unfortunately named Holy War. You know that often (maybe more often than not) your supporters are involved on incidents that the local news media love to dwell on. (They have to sell advertising, after all.) Does your university really need this right now?
  
  
• You don't think so. You have a mission to fulfill and there are all kinds of new possibilities. Your university just joined the PAC-12 and are loving the connections that now gives you to universities like Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, and Washington. You've seen applications from out-of-state students increase by 30% already. You have a Nobel Prize winner. Membership in the Association of American Universities will probably come soon. Does it help your university to be seen as mired in an often petty rivalry with BYU? Or would you rather try to distance yourself from that and be perceived on a higher plane? You decide the latter is the way to go.
  
  
• Athletically, as a PAC-12 member now you know you have a huge challenge ahead. Your athletics budget, which was at or near the top of your old league, is now dead last in the PAC-12. Does it help your university to be seen as on a par with BYU? If you beat them in a game you get little credit because you're supposed to beat them. If they beat you, it's an even bigger win for them because you're a PAC-12 school. (This, of course, is not necessarily true in any given year; it's just a practical reality because of the way the news media outside Utah sees the matter.)
  
  
• Has anyone suggested to you that this is a good way to "stick it" to BYU? Maybe, but you know that higher education doesn't work that way, especially in Utah. For one thing, you know that what goes around, comes around, and that Utah and BYU need each other on certain levels. You know the two schools have cooperated on hundreds, if not thousands, of projects over the decades and have, at least at the leadership level, a mutual respect and understanding of one another's respective missions as institutions, and of the reality that both universities live in the same ecosystem to a large extent. It's foolish for them to be "shafting" each other. It's not something you take seriously. EDIT: Following long-standing tradition, you probably discussed this decision with BYU's president before you announced it.

OK, that's one way of looking at it. I'd like to see more, rather then less, engagement between the two schools and the two sides of the Utah culture clash. But it looks like the Utah leadership has decided that taking a break is best. I disagree but I can see how they might come to that conclusion, and they may well turn out to be right in deciding this is best for the U.

Meanwhile, BYU will be fine. It has enormous resources (both human and financial, not to mention spiritual) at its disposal and does not need to play Utah every year to fulfill its mission with great success.

I don't know these things to be true with every fiber of my being, but I think I have sized up the situation right.

I'll be back after I don my asbestos suit.

[Paperback Writer]

I simply don't buy it that the U wants to tone down the rivalry because they think it's getting too nasty and therefore they're not scheduling games with BYU. I do think they wouldn't mind toning down the rivalry to make BYU more irrelevant while they get home games with USC, UCLA and some of the Pac 10 north teams every other year while BYU's stuck playing NMSU. That makes perfect sense to me.

I don't care what high placed sources are telling whomever that they want to get rid of the nastiness -- they're bullshitting you. I can't think of a single college rivalry across the country where they've taken a similar course and I can think of at least ten rivalries just as nasty or more nasty than BYU v. Utah:

Alabama v. Auburn
Florida v. Florida State
Ohio State v. Michigan
Duke v. UNC
UCLA v. USC
Oregon v. Oregon State
Texas v. aTm (also cancelled and not because they thought it was getting too nasty)
Kansas v. Missouri (also cancelled and, again, it wasn't because it was getting too nasty)
Georgia v. Florida
Utah v. Colorado

A couple not mentioned but the first I think of is: Texas-OU. IMO, that rivals Bama-Auburn in nastiness. Another one worth mentioning is Cal-Stanford; not sure that really gets natsy but that's not played in my backyard like the Red River Rivarly. The only rivarly that comes to mind where nastiness was cited as a factor for canceling was: Florida-Miami. Those programs played every year from 1944-87. Going from memory, it was not renewed by Florida and the nastiness factor was mentioned. It is also worth mentioning the rivarly was cancelled after Miami won a couple of national championships and would soon win a couple more. Miami-Florida didn't play from 1988-1999. In the new century they've met 3 times during the regular season and a couple of more times in bowl games. Not sure if that will be the new reality for BYU-Utah.

[Pelado]

OK, I will take a shot at this. Remember that I want the annual rivalry game to continue and am sad it will not continue. I wish the U's leadership would find a different approach.

Here are my speculative thoughts as to how the U. got to its current decision.

Pretend you are David Pershing, the U.'s president. You've been at Utah since 1977 and have a deep understanding of its needs and culture at all levels, and you understand the State of Utah and its unique culture pretty well too -- you've raised your kids there, you've taught thousands of local students as a much-loved and respected engineering professor, and you've generally been part of the community.

Now you're deciding, with your Athletics Director and Special Assistant, on whether to reduce the U.'s level of engagement with BYU in intercollegiate athletics. You decide that it's in the U's best interests to take a step back. You won't stop playing BYU in football, you just won't play every year. You'll play them once annually in basketball. You know this will anger some people but you decide to go ahead anyway.

In addition to the PAC-12 scheduling issues that Chris Hill raises, in making this decision you consider the following:

• You can't win the P.R. war in this case. You're the president of the state's flagship public university and in the eyes of many of the state's citizens (including the state legislature, which supplies a significant amount of your funding) you are an undesirable part of the state's culture and stand in the way of BYU, which is the dominant religion's flagship university. The annual rivalry football game, unlike any other rivalry in the country, is deeply infused with religion and the resulting bitterness. You are the "bad guy" in the unfortunately named Holy War. You know that often (maybe more often than not) your supporters are involved on incidents that the local news media love to dwell on. (They have to sell advertising, after all.) Does your university really need this right now?
  
  
• You don't think so. You have a mission to fulfill and there are all kinds of new possibilities. Your university just joined the PAC-12 and are loving the connections that now gives you to universities like Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, and Washington. You've seen applications from out-of-state students increase by 30% already. You have a Nobel Prize winner. Membership in the Association of American Universities will probably come soon. Does it help your university to be seen as mired in an often petty rivalry with BYU? Or would you rather try to distance yourself from that and be perceived on a higher plane? You decide the latter is the way to go.
  
  
• Athletically, as a PAC-12 member now you know you have a huge challenge ahead. Your athletics budget, which was at or near the top of your old league, is now dead last in the PAC-12. Does it help your university to be seen as on a par with BYU? If you beat them in a game you get little credit because you're supposed to beat them. If they beat you, it's an even bigger win for them because you're a PAC-12 school. (This, of course, is not necessarily true in any given year; it's just a practical reality because of the way the news media outside Utah sees the matter.)
  
  
• Has anyone suggested to you that this is a good way to "stick it" to BYU? Maybe, but you know that higher education doesn't work that way, especially in Utah. For one thing, you know that what goes around, comes around, and that Utah and BYU need each other on certain levels. You know the two schools have cooperated on hundreds, if not thousands, of projects over the decades and have, at least at the leadership level, a mutual respect and understanding of one another's respective missions as institutions, and of the reality that both universities live in the same ecosystem to a large extent. It's foolish for them to be "shafting" each other. It's not something you take seriously.

OK, that's one way of looking at it. I'd like to see more, rather then less, engagement between the two schools and the two sides of the Utah culture clash. But it looks like the Utah leadership has decided that taking a break is best. I disagree but I can see how they might come to that conclusion, and they may well turn out to be right in concluding this is best for the U.

Meanwhile, BYU will be fine. It has enormous resources (both human and financial, not to mention spiritual) at its disposal and does not need to play Utah every year to fulfill its mission with great success.

I don't know these things to be true with every fiber of my being, but I think I have sized up the situation right.

I'll be back after I don my asbestos suit.

To paraphrase:

1) The local media likes to make fun of some Ute fans that do dumb things connected to the rivalry
2) Don't want being seen with BYU too much to hurt street cred
3) The national media doesn't give credit for wins against BYU
4) Even though people have suggested marginalizing BYU, that would never make sense for institutions of higher education

Responses:

1) I think that's been mentioned
2) Self-aggrandizement probably does sound better than marginalizing an opponent
3) B.S.
4) It wouldn't surprise me if this has happened in the past - anyone have examples?