@openwheel C'mon Man. It's a bad look because you're scheduling games with contractual implications and then paying to get out of them. If it was any other program, you'd immediately be saying "they're ducking competition". UMASS, who'd lost what, 13 straight? Suddenly upsets Rutgers and whammo, they're dropped? I'm not sure you're even looking through crimson colored glasses, if you can't see that. Perhaps crimson sleeping mask?
How is it a bad look if UMASS is the one wanting out?
Was IU supposed to deny their request?
We should have made THEM pay to get out of the game.
Cig is the man that keeps on giving.
Who do you guys think sits on the CFP selection committees? It's former coaches, ADs even sportswriters and all of them have these preconceived notions and biases. And, if they don't have a B10 background, many of them will want to punish IU for that perceived flaw. Heck look at 2024: many folks didn't think a 1 loss IU team belonged. Like I said, as long as we have 1 or fewer losses I accept that I'm wrong.
But, it is laughable to me how many Hoosiers now are totally fine with playing cupcakes. Many of whom rail about no good home game opponents on the bball schedule. I just don't think a Lville or UVA would've beaten a Cig team so far, and I think it often would better prepare the team for tough early season conference games. Maybe we'd not have struggled against an Iowa or Northwestern if we'd already played a UVA. I don't really like playing any directional teams, let alone 3. You'd really be sweating a precon that was ISU, Ball St and Cincy, UK or Lville for instance? And that to me would be a much more interesting and better precon. Cupcake, MAC level and 1 P4 team. We're a really good team, play some decent competition. It's been the mantra we were raised on and now no one wants to acknowledge that.
@kkott 16-0 National Champs. I don’t care at all.
I’m backing whatever our excellent staff wants to do.
And last year we added some decent competition to the schedule: Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, and Miami.
@tammany That's where I've landed: accept it because so far they've proven they can get through a season with 1 loss or less, and i think that makes it a moot point. And, I also accept the folly that I'm disagreeing with folks who are experienced professionals at what they do. Doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, even if I accept it could be wrong. And so far, cupcakes do sharpen iron I guess, or at least hasn't dulled it enough to matter!
N TX this year and ODU last year were not totally cupcakes.
I get a P4 OOC would be more fun. I wish we kept ND. I just don’t mind if the staff has a different strategy.
We aren’t necessarily out with two losses. It’s hard to know if a meaningful P4 OOC helps us — we have to win that game and that just isnt a given.
The B1G will usually give us enough SOS to prove ourselves worthy or not. We have more benefit of the doubt than in ‘24.
If we are a two loss team this year (could be worse, could be better, idk), I think our performance vs OSU will be looked at very closely.
If there had been beating of the drums for us to boot UMass for a clearly stronger opponent you could complain about this change. But we didn't weaken our schedule.
Why ##### about NOT weakening our schedule? Because a few message board posters out there think we did?
Those sitting on the committees you talk about, know better. Jacksonville State and Conference USA can certainly compete with the Mid-American in football.
Where do we want a recruiting footprint? The south and southeast? Or the football powerhouse state of Massachusetts?
What I read now was this all started with Pac-12 Colorado State wanting to weaken their schedule, i.e. add another home game... And boot Wisconsin. So Wisconsin mutually agreed to weaken their schedule by changing to UMass instead. Taking our cupcake. (Maybe they offered UMass more than us? Don't know.) So then we agreed to NOT weaken our schedule by swapping in Jacksonville State.
Go bitch about Colorado State and Wisconsin buttering up their schedules.
(I don't actually know if the above 'order of the dominoes' is right... lol. FBS schedules reported it that way. But also say our talks with UMass go back to last month. But it seems reasonable. Wisconsin is listed as paying about $75k more than we would have paid, pretty much the same.)
@kkott Playing a middling high major team, in the preconference, brings about much more risk, than reward. Despite the comments Cig makes regarding fan perceptions, and media perceptions... I think practically, it doesn't factor in to his decision making process, really at all. So I'll say again something I believe to be true. If you can't schedule a national brand name in the OOC, with the 9 game conference schedule, take the 3 wins, the 3 home games. Setup your preseason to gradually, and controllably, build through weeks 1-3, to better prepare your team for the rigors of the B10 schedule. Get more guys in the 2 deep significant playing time in those OOC games. Spend less time in practice needing to game plan for a specific opponent, more time on your own processes.
The reason I keep bringing up the brand name thing, versus just any P4 school...
Brand name doesn't matter if they're good or bad. It takes the unpredictability of scheduling multiple years out of play. Playing Miami, win or lose, gets you what you're using as the reason for scheduling a P4 team. And it doesn't really matter if they end up being legit Miami, or being Cheetos Bowl Miami. And at that point, a loss really doesn't matter, so the risk isn't there nearly as much.
If its a program like Boston College, or Virginia, or Louisville, or Kansas. And you're scheduling it multiple years out, there's no way to know how good those programs would be. So... you very easily could be giving up a valuable home game, to go play an awful P4 team on the road. Or, you're gonna go play at Virginia, a top 20 level team, that no one really pays attention to, cares about, and the fallout from losing that type of game is WAAAAYYYY worse than the benefit of winning is. IU's first year... if they were to have lost to a good Virginia team in OOC, and then lost to OSU, no way they make the playoffs. And we're seeing this season, that even after winning a Natty, IU isn't given much leeway in terms of margin for error, like the SEC teams, and/or the brand name schools are. If they played Louisville this year, instead of Howard... if they lost that game... I'd guess they're probably ranked around 15th or so. And another loss in the B10 probably pushes them outside the CFP. If they win that game, instead of being ranked 7th, they're probably 4th... and while people wouldn't have the cupcake narrative to keep throwing out... they'd still be talking about how they need to prove it against an elite team. They get that opportunity in a couple weeks... and it was going to happen no matter who we played in OOC.
In short... I don't think there will regularly be a scenario where a 10-2 IU team has its CFP chances markedly changed by one of those wins or losses being a program like Virginia in the OOC. Texas? ND? Bama? Sure! And I'm perplexed that IU was so willing to drop the ND series. But the others, ehhh... And I don't think the rare, occasional, possibility that a game like that could make the difference between CFP, and not, is enough reason over the many reasons not to play them.
Boy that's a stretch. It doesn't cause any stress to my thinking at all. Outside games of the B1G conference schedule Cignetti knows full well how to prepare properly and it's the management of OOC scheduling. Working very well so far. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
People getting in a tizzy about UMass pulling out of this game are hilarious. They were arguably the worst FBS team in the country and IU replaced them with Jacksonville State. I get the scheduling critics, but this ain't the one to go bananas over.
However, and this is just my gut feeling, the Big Ten will either require a 10th P4 game or move to 10 conference games.
Thank you for reading Hoosier Huddle
However, and this is just my gut feeling, the Big Ten will either require a 10th P4 game or move to 10 conference games.
Which do you prefer? 10th P4 is interesting playing a different conference, and 10 conference games would help better sort out the B1G.
I don’t have a strong preference.
We'll be at 20 teams soon and then we're heading back to divisions in my opinion! I guess that depends on the PCSA passing, which I don't think will happen, so maybe not another expansion coming.
@gros-louis even more reason to go to 10 Conference games. Also I think these national guys don't talk about how conference expansion really takes away potential non-conference foes. Nobody would be crying if IU had scheduled any of the new comers to the Big Ten as Non-Con ganmes.
Thank you for reading Hoosier Huddle
The other thing that literally nearly everyone overlooks in regard to our scheduling N Texas was that the team we thought we were scheduling is actually the team that makes up most of the starters at Ok St now (along with nearly their entire coaching staff)… That would be the same team that beat Oregon…
We thought we were scheduling a team that was in the Playoff discussion last Fall and had no way of knowing they’d leave en-mass for Oklahoma State…
So we Did try to upgrade the schedule and got this years version of North Texas instead… (and missed the group that upset Oregon [which doesn’t bother me one bit]…) .
Can you imagine the hue and cry and nashing of teeth had That been us losing to N Tx!?!
The same people bitching about our strength of schedule would be going after the coaching staff, calling them overpaid one trick ponies (and those would be the Kind words).
@tammany I prefer 10 conference games. That ensures 7 home games every year. If you do the 9 conference games, then require a 10th P4 game, that opens up the possibility of another road game, or neutral field game... you could have years where you have 4 home conference games, and 2 home OOC games. I don't think that's something IU should let even be a possibility, if they can avoid it. And the only way that's worth it, is if that added P4 opponent is a big, brand name. Adding another conference game ensures all teams get the same amount of home and away games, and also helps improve the uneven scheduling advantages some teams end up getting over others.
Its gonna be interesting if the B10 does go to 10 games, if that ends up impacting a program like ND at all. Notre Dame really has zero need or incentive to join a conference, right now. But if the major conferences keep expanding, and making schedule changes like this...that make it make less sense for them to schedule ND with one of their OOC games, it could happen very quickly that ND is left with a predominately ACC, Service academies, and Rice type opponents.
We'll be at 20 teams soon and then we're heading back to divisions in my opinion! I guess that depends on the PCSA passing, which I don't think will happen, so maybe not another expansion coming.
Bring back Leaders and Legends. vbg