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and the cows from chic-fila concur with this notice.

Here's a bit of devil's advocate. Just bare with me.
Let's say that we got to completely choose our own schedule and the conference you are in doesn't matter.
Given the state of the team RIGHT NOW, what 12 opponents would you place on your schedule at the beginning of the year?

Forget about coaches and players. We're talking about the state of the team as it stands.

redpony wrote:actually arguing that playing top level bcs schools at SMU is really no different that playing them at other universities that play tough schedules. If a kid is afraid of 'tough' fball then maybe he should think d-lll.

Im not saying afraid im saying he doesnt want to go home on vacation an explain to his faimley and freinds the 3 or 4 40 point losses every year.

skurtn wrote:Here's a bit of devil's advocate. Just bare with me.
Let's say that we got to completely choose our own schedule and the conference you are in doesn't matter.
Given the state of the team RIGHT NOW, what 12 opponents would you place on your schedule at the beginning of the year?

Forget about coaches and players. We're talking about the state of the team as it stands.

As it stands right now, really the main change I would like to see would be one warm-up game to start (UTSA, UNT, SFA, whatever) before the rednecks from Lubbock come in to knock some of the off-season rust off. Looking at where we are and where we want to go, we need to get from "wow, this is a scary schedule" to the point of paraphrasing ED "didn't matter who we played, we knew by Thursday that we were going to win on Saturday". We're nowhere near the latter, but we'll never get there beating up the SFA and Memphises of the world. We need to sack up and first be competitive and then BEAT these kinds of teams. To those who wonder why the TCU win last year didn't mark an attendance improvement, it's because the casual fans thought that was a fluke. Guess what? We went right out there this year and proved those folks right. That's gotta stop, and next year is as good a time as any to put an end to it.

I want to see us play and compete with teams like Tech, TCU, Baylor. I think A&M and some of the other big 12 teams would be nice, but the talent gap is just too big right now.

Games like those (and winning those, clearly) get the DFW area interested in SMU football, which is the only way we can build our fanbase.

Sure, if we string together a few 10 win seasons by playing a bunch of directional schools, we may get some notice after a while, but for now, we need to win the regional matchups against the bigger names.

Since we have TT, Baylor and TCU next year, I don't see the need to play A$M, an almost sure loss. Get rid of it. We're not recruiting well enough yet to play 4 BCS games OOC and win them all. And almost nobody plays all BCS OOC anyway.

Or just win one.

Guys, we can't even take care of our side of C-USA. Why are we wringing our hands about OOC losses? Just be competitive and earn some respect. Knock one or two off. Then take care of conference. Simple.

Let logic come into your schedule .
game 1 Div II team -- Allows the o&d to get the game speed of play down work the rust out
game 2 Low Div I team (Sun Belt) -- Still allows the settling in of the team but must exert to win.
game 3 TCU -- Cant drop them also gives us a BCS game.
game 4 OC --Money game Ohio State, Notre Dame etc. Play it in the Cotton Bowl.

Conference schedule. If we win the conference and 3 of the 4 OC game we get a money bowl
game, win them all and good things can happen.

I also think its important to say even with big east teams, our attendance will suck. Look at the Houston game, pathetic, and they are close by. We need to upset the OOC schedule not choose to play cupcakes to beat. Our recruiting hasn't been good after three bowl attendance so what would 2 more even do? Might as well put us in opportunity to shine in front of big names that Dallas cares about

My ideal schedule:

TCU - every year
Baylor or Tech - 3 out of 4 years
SFA, UTSA or Lamar type program - 3 out of 4 years
NTSU - 2 out of 4 years
Kansas or Wash St or any other low level BCS school - 2 out of 4 years
Mississippi or Arizona St or Arkansas type school - 2 out of 4 years

We have to beat current BCS programs to earn respect. IMO beating even a weaken Wash St helps us on the national stage a lot more than SoMiss, even when the SoMiss team is superior.

I wanna play TCU, Baylor and TT every year as conference games.

How did TCU do it? They've had a good run, but let's be honest the MWC (outside of Boisie) was probably not as good as CUSA the last few years (UH, UCF, and USM . . . even ECU from a few years ago . . . pound for pound TCU's conference schedule was pretty cupcake). No?

ojaipony wrote:How did TCU do it?

Since Patterson became head coach..
2000 - Northwestern, Arkansas State, Navy, SMU
2001 - #4 Nebraska, North Texas, SMU
2002 - Northwestern, SMU, North Texas
2003 - Navy, Vanderbilt, Arizona, SMU
2004 - Northwestern, SMU, Texas Tech
2005 - Oklahoma, SMU, Army
2006 - Baylor, UC Davis, Texas Tech, Army
2007 - Baylor, Texas, SMU, Stanford
2008 - SFA, Stanford, SMU, Oklahoma
2009 - Virginia, Texas State, Clemson, SMU
2010 - Oregon State, Tennessee Tech, Baylor, SMU
2011 - Baylor, Louisiana Monroe, Portland State, SMU, BYU
2012 - Grambling State, Virginia, SMU

It's sad for so many on this board to see JJ have a chance at another bowl game. Obviously from comments elsewhere, you hate his recruits. You hate his successes. Why are you here? UT has a board. So does NTSU and West Texas State.

ojaipony wrote:How did TCU do it? They've had a good run, but let's be honest the MWC (outside of Boisie) was probably not as good as CUSA the last few years (UH, UCF, and USM . . . even ECU from a few years ago . . . pound for pound TCU's conference schedule was pretty cupcake). No?

The MWC has had a higher Sagarin rating than CUSA in 4 of the last 5 years. Over that period the MWC has produced more 10 win teams also, even though it is smaller in numbers.