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Grant Carter wrote:

SMU2007 wrote:Compared to every team in the acc, big 10, big 12, sec, and pac 12, yes.

Good to have a definition. Over half the teams in FBS have embarrassing schedule according to you. I guess everyone not in the top five conferences should hang their head in shame. You initial post made it sound to me like you thought SMU was an outlier.
In your opinion does SMU have the least embarrassing schedule of any team not in one of those conferences?

Do any of the teams in the top 5 conferences have embarrassing schedules? For example, Arizona plays Northern Arizona, UTSA and UNLV.


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I think there is a bigger gap than ever between the big boys and the dump heap of the AAC, cusa, mac, sunbelt and mountain west.

I think relative to the rest of the dump heap, our schedule is fine. AAC is as good or better than any of those other 4 and our OOC games were good, and better on average than the rest of our schedule.

Unfortunately I don't think this matters much to the average college football fan. Lets play this game: find a random person on the street that watches college football. Ask them if they can name 3 teams in the AAC, the Mac, the sunbelt, mwc and cusa. I say 9/10 will not.

The big 5 conferences? No problem. No one cares about the teams in the dump heap. That makes the conference schedule embarrassing.

Thanks, Calallen, I had forgotten the facts you listed about TCU. I supposed some will ignore them. TCU did it just right as I think what Hart is advocating is just right as well. I am on his side in this and with all the Texas D1 schools (except Rice) we can have a schedule with a couple of tough teams and a couple of games in which we are favored by a touchdown or so, schools which will bring some visiting fans into Ford.

SMU2007 wrote:

Grant Carter wrote:

SMU2007 wrote:Compared to every team in the acc, big 10, big 12, sec, and pac 12, yes.

Good to have a definition. Over half the teams in FBS have embarrassing schedule according to you. I guess everyone not in the top five conferences should hang their head in shame. You initial post made it sound to me like you thought SMU was an outlier.
In your opinion does SMU have the least embarrassing schedule of any team not in one of those conferences?

Do any of the teams in the top 5 conferences have embarrassing schedules? For example, Arizona plays Northern Arizona, UTSA and UNLV.


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I think there is a bigger gap than ever between the big boys and the dump heap of the AAC, cusa, mac, sunbelt and mountain west.

I think relative to the rest of the dump heap, our schedule is fine. AAC is as good or better than any of those other 4 and our OOC games were good, and better on average than the rest of our schedule.

Unfortunately I don't think this matters much to the average college football fan. Lets play this game: find a random person on the street that watches college football. Ask them if they can name 3 teams in the AAC, the Mac, the sunbelt, mwc and cusa. I say 9/10 will not.

The big 5 conferences? No problem. No one cares about the teams in the dump heap. That makes the conference schedule embarrassing.

So when you say our schedule is an embarrassment what you really mean is that our conference is an embarassment to you and we have one of the, if not the, least embarrassing schedules of anyone not in the top 5 conferences. Lumping everything about the current and near future structure of the sport of college football into the word schedule was just not clear for me, apologies.


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AusTxPony wrote:Thanks, Calallen, I had forgotten the facts you listed about TCU. I supposed some will ignore them. TCU did it just right as I think what Hart is advocating is just right as well. I am on his side in this and with all the Texas D1 schools (except Rice) we can have a schedule with a couple of tough teams and a couple of games in which we are favored by a touchdown or so, schools which will bring some visiting fans into Ford.

I think that all of us on this board would love to see us playing (and beating) Texas, OU, A&M, and Baylor regularly. But if we are going to build our program, we need to follow the blueprin for building the program. I think you are right that Hart's scheduling philosophy is similar to what TCU did over their program build and I can only hope that Hart is also committed to doing the other things that TCU did on their rise as well.

tough day for the SMU plays a "tough schedule" crowd-SMU's strength of schedule drops 12 places to 57 and SMU didn't even play this week. Its going to end up in the 70-75th toughest schedule as Tech continues to play decent teams and TCU struggles and we play UCONN and USF who are below the Mendoza Line

Stallion wrote:tough day for the SMU plays a "tough schedule" crowd-SMU's strength of schedule drops 12 places to 57 and SMU didn't even play this week. Its going to end up in the 70-75th toughest schedule as Tech continues to play decent teams and TCU struggles and we play UCONN and USF who are below the Mendoza Line

and the hits our soon to be conference mates Tulsa and Tulane took aren't going to help next year

I think the addition of Tulsa and Tulane really backfired on our conference. Trying to get two new tv markets, but the tv guys yawned and said bleh, and now we are stuck with two teams that are pretty bad teams in places nobody cares about, and our eastern teams hate the conference even more which means it is unstable.

But on the plus side, we get a game in N.O. Every other year again.

gostangs wrote:I think the addition of Tulsa and Tulane really backfired on our conference. Trying to get two new tv markets, but the tv guys yawned and said bleh, and now we are stuck with two teams that are pretty bad teams in places nobody cares about, and our eastern teams hate the conference even more which means it is unstable.

But on the plus side, we get a game in N.O. Every other year again.

that about sums it up. Tulsa and Tulane are good conference mates for SMU because of our similarities and proximity, but they will need to step up their games to please our eastern conference mates

PonyTime wrote:

SoCal_Pony wrote: JJ has coached 72 games at SMU. Only 6 times has he even defeated a team with a winning record, and of those 6 wins, only 4 were ranked at year-end better than 55.

TCU, Tulsa, Tulsa, East Carolina.

That hardly qualifies as a Top 55 program.

Hard to imagine that Fresno State is not on this list. They were not in the top 55 at year's end? Essentially the same Fresno State team that is currently 8-0 and ranked.

They were ranked #58 by Sagarin.

Our other bowl opponents:

The Nevada team we defeated in Hawaii was ranked #70, Army was ranked #73 & Pitt was ranked #69.

gostangs wrote:I think the addition of Tulsa and Tulane really backfired on our conference. Trying to get two new tv markets, but the tv guys yawned and said bleh, and now we are stuck with two teams that are pretty bad teams in places nobody cares about, and our eastern teams hate the conference even more which means it is unstable.

But on the plus side, we get a game in N.O. Every other year again.

Tulsa, a team that has been to 8 (winning 5) bowl games in the last 10 years stinks?

Lebanese4Life wrote:

ponyboy wrote:We've earned upper second tier status. We're a top 55 school instead of a school in the 115 of 120 range pre JJ.

Before anyone goes there, it''s not good enough. Let's keep going. But we've earned *something*

We are nowhere near the 55th best team in the nation.

Sorry. Allow me to clarify.

1) I believe you judge a season in its entireity. So we won't know how good this year's team is/was until the college football season is done in January, 2014.

2) I was making a longer term comment on how June Jones has vastly and dramatically changed things here. In the last four years we averaged a 55 end of season ranking per Congrove.

Hope that helps.

They were ranked #58 by Sagarin. (Fresno)
Our other bowl opponents:

The Nevada team we defeated in Hawaii was ranked #70, Army was ranked #73 & Pitt was ranked #69.[/quote]

I think this makes Calallen's point. No one remembers who TCU beat, just that they won. No one remembers the rankings of our Bowl opponents, just that we've won 3 of 4. I might add that Fresno and Nevada were ranked higher before our game...don't know about Pitt.

PonyTime wrote:

gostangs wrote:I think the addition of Tulsa and Tulane really backfired on our conference. Trying to get two new tv markets, but the tv guys yawned and said bleh, and now we are stuck with two teams that are pretty bad teams in places nobody cares about, and our eastern teams hate the conference even more which means it is unstable.

But on the plus side, we get a game in N.O. Every other year again.

Tulsa, a team that has been to 8 (winning 5) bowl games in the last 10 years stinks?

Bowl games? So we are judging success based on the ability to go .500 in conference USA?

Not saying they haven't had successful seasons, but that is an idiotic benchmark

Tulsa has achieved a little more than that though with Division championships, conference championships, Championship appearances, multiple double digit winning seasons, flirting with Top 25

mrydel wrote:The issue is that we have a very weak conference overall. And compounding that by playing weak OOC games makes it kind of embarrassing. I can see that. This is why we need to schedule better teams than our conference opponents if we ever want to be recognized, and why the big boys can get away with weak sister teams since they have better conference competition.

I have a simple (I hope) question for you:
Do you find it better to lose to larger/better OOC teams in the interim? Or win against smaller/weaker OOC teams in the interim?


Me, personally? I don't believe getting TV exposure for every game is all that important, particular if it means that we're likely to lose. What I do believe is more important, are getting decisive wins, even if it's against weaker opponents. In fact, I feel we should be playing weaker teams, particularly earlier in the season, so that our team has a chance to get some wins under their belt, learn to work together in live situations, so that when they go to conference games, they have that much more experience playing as a team and can exercise that experience.

In the long run, I believe if we can start making regular bowl game appearances, even weak-sauce ones... that will be a huge boon to SMU football.

Look at Florida State; with the exception of Florida (their rival), all of their OOC games are way below them (in fact, one of them wasn't even televised). I know, I know, it isn't quite apples to apples (due to their in-conference games)... but I think it's interesting to see that a team of that caliber still schedules easy teams; Bethune, Idaho, and Nevada.