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I want to complete with anyone we play. I am tired of being a cupcake. We are not picking big name teams to play. They are picking us for easy wins. We need to prepare and recruit to compete.

And look at Florida State. They most likely will not get to play for the National Championship because of their strength of schedule. I would wager by year end they are going to regret their OOC schedule.

We have had 25 years to prepare to compete and have blown it. We do not have a 5 or 10 year window any more. We need to compete now.

i regret that we won't be able to play for the nc either. stupid system.

NIU and Fresno St are getting huge national attention, both are undefeated and ranked in the top 20, fighting for a BCS birth. Here are their schedules, which feature 1 or 2 tough OOC games (and this is with much weaker conference schedules than AAC!):

NIU:
at Iowa
at Idaho
vs. Eastern Illinois
at Purdue
vs. Akron *
at Central Michigan *
vs. Eastern Michigan *
at Massachusetts *
vs. Ball State *
at Toledo *
vs. Western Michigan *

Fresno St:
vs. Rutgers
vs. Cal Poly
at Colorado
vs. Boise State
at Hawai'i
at Idaho
vs. UNLV
at San Diego St.
vs. Nevada
at Wyoming
vs. New Mexico
at San Jose State

Take a look at those teams. Cupcake scheules, but nobody cares about that. People only care that they are undefeated and ranked! SMU should follow this model.

ponyinNC wrote: Take a look at those teams. Cupcake scheules, but nobody cares about that. People only care that they are undefeated and ranked! SMU should follow this model.

Interesting idea in theory but in practice if you don't have the talent/coaching then you can rack up a lot of losses even with a cupcake OOC schedule. With the talent/coaching we have on hand we'd have 2 losses apiece against NIU and Fresno State's OOC schedules.

yea, Fresno beat Rutgers, which we couldn't do. Their game against Colorado was postponed, but still, that is an easy schedule except for Boise St (who is having a bad year themselves!).

Fresno st catches 3 teams when they are having really down years, and they may go to BCS! Heck, we beat the crap out of them last year!

NIU beat Iowa and Purdue - both on the road. But their schedule is super cupcake.

ponyinNC wrote:yea, Fresno beat Rutgers, which we couldn't do. Their game against Colorado was postponed, but still, that is an easy schedule except for Boise St (who is having a bad year themselves!).

Fresno st catches 3 teams when they are having really down years, and they may go to BCS! Heck, we beat the crap out of them last year!

NIU beat Iowa and Purdue - both on the road. But their schedule is super cupcake.

I don't know about "super cupcake". They both have had about 4 tough games apiece already and neither are out of the woods yet. It seems easy to just plug in those teams to our schedule and count up the wins but a lot of those cupcakes are tougher than they appear.

mrydel wrote:I want to complete with anyone we play. I am tired of being a cupcake. We are not picking big name teams to play. They are picking us for easy wins. We need to prepare and recruit to compete.

And look at Florida State. They most likely will not get to play for the National Championship because of their strength of schedule. I would wager by year end they are going to regret their OOC schedule.

We have had 25 years to prepare to compete and have blown it. We do not have a 5 or 10 year window any more. We need to compete now.

That's great that they're picking us. But it takes two to tango; ergo we don't have to accept the request.
With respect to FL State, we'll see.

sbsmith wrote:

ponyinNC wrote:yea, Fresno beat Rutgers, which we couldn't do. Their game against Colorado was postponed, but still, that is an easy schedule except for Boise St (who is having a bad year themselves!).

Fresno st catches 3 teams when they are having really down years, and they may go to BCS! Heck, we beat the crap out of them last year!

NIU beat Iowa and Purdue - both on the road. But their schedule is super cupcake.

I don't know about "super cupcake". They both have had about 4 tough games apiece already and neither are out of the woods yet. It seems easy to just plug in those teams to our schedule and count up the wins but a lot of those cupcakes are tougher than they appear.

I don't know where the 4 tough games apiece are that you are talking about, when comparing that to (when we played them) a top 10 TAMU team, a top 25 Texas Tech team, and a ranked TCU team - again, at the time we palyed them.

NIU tough games - at Iowa, at Purdue (tough game? Purdue is 1-7 and lost to Cincy 42-7!)
FSU tough games - Fresno at home? (tough game? not IMHO) Boise at home has been their only tough game

One other thing to consider is that Iowa, Purdue, and Boise were most likely all considerably better when scheduled than they are this year. Tech was very beatable this year and we did not do it. A&M will be at a lesser level when Manziel is gone. We got a bad draw with him. These schedules are made years in advance. I would think most of us believed 5 years ago that Jones would have us competitive, but he has not. I now have hope that we can compete with Michigan in 5 years, and NTSU next year.

ponyinNC wrote:
I don't know where the 4 tough games apiece are that you are talking about, when comparing that to (when we played them) a top 10 TAMU team, a top 25 Texas Tech team, and a ranked TCU team - again, at the time we palyed them.

NIU tough games - at Iowa, at Purdue (tough game? Purdue is 1-7 and lost to Cincy 42-7!)
FSU tough games - Fresno at home? (tough game? not IMHO) Boise at home has been their only tough game

Take a look at the results of their games. Both have played 4 games that were close and could have gone either way late in the 4th quarter. My whole point is that these cupcakes aren't automatic wins like some seem to think they are. Hell we've had our fair share of trouble so far against the cupcakes on our own schedule.


NIU
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332432294
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332642459
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332570070
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332852459


Fresno State
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332410278
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332630278
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332710062
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=332990021

What happened to SMU being in a BCS Conference for 1 year and deserving the step up -after 4 bowl games -to the former Big East Conference-which was definitely going to be a much tougher challenge. You guys are never going to get out of this small time "how can we schedule the easiest teams possible to make the BCS" mind set. Now we are modeling a MAC school. Hey how about what those Sun Belt schools are doing? We very easily could have been in a conference playing a much harder schedule with BYU, Boise and Louisville on our schedule. SMU's Big Time bravado is a mirage and many SMU are perfectly happy with the small time. When all is said and done the 2013 SMU schedule will be a middle of the road slightly below average schedule NCAA schedule

mrydel wrote:One other thing to consider is that Iowa, Purdue, and Boise were most likely all considerably better when scheduled than they are this year. Tech was very beatable this year and we did not do it. A&M will be at a lesser level when Manziel is gone. We got a bad draw with him. These schedules are made years in advance. I would think most of us believed 5 years ago that Jones would have us competitive, but he has not. I now have hope that we can compete with Michigan in 5 years, and NTSU next year.

Good points

mrydel wrote: I would think most of us believed 5 years ago that Jones would have us competitive, but he has not.

True, I don't remember this much schedule fear back around 2010 when we were trending up and June was frequently trotting out his "1.5 classes away from the BCS" line. People were pointing to the 2012-2014 OOC schedules as opportunities for marquee wins.

Yep

I think the "great" Coach wrote a check "bad Recruiting" couldn't cash.