Recent Comments

We do NOT want to see that!

This is a football blog with decent readership... just start a post here. It'll show up in the tracker and on the sidebar and you'll get a lot of feedback.

Legolas and Gimli were on the winning side.

Thanks for the kind words. I have actually tried to do it, but failed miserably and gave up. I'm not hopeless with the computer, but pretty close to it. Fish pictures, though, are truly meant to be shared, and between French and the rest of us avid fishermen, I believe we could deliver a prodigious amount of fish porn if encouraged.
As for the beer, always welcome. If I know you're coming, I'll spring for a whiskey.

C.....Can you do it anyway?

Considering that both ECU scores were kinda unusual defensive busts on plays of over 70 yd each, that makes it even more encouraging.

Clemson's defense is overrated, Venables coverages are totally lackluster, or at least, poorly taught. His defense lives and dies on having a bigger (much bigger) and faster d line than your line can hope to handle. His defense puts up gaudy numbers against lesser competition, gets torched by offenses with any nuance or can manage a little pass protection. He is also not great at in game adjustments. If I had a football blog with a decent readership, I would post a long form breakdown of why Venables is the most overrated defensive coordinator in college football. Not because he isn't good, he is, but because he isn't great.

it's easy to make it sound so simple...assuming all those other leagues comply with your limits

the problem is all 5 leagues are going to be trying to play games against all of the other 4 leagues....certain teams will be in higher demand than others and in the end it's very possible that during the game scheduling feeding frenzy some teams get left with too many open slots on their schedule and no teams available to fill them.

You can't really play the "zero-sum" card here because with so many open slots being in one conference the available slots outside of that conference are bound to fill up faster and you'll be left with multiple ACC teams with open slots that can only be filled by.....other ACC teams?

Even SEC bottom feeders will be more desirable games for those other leagues than some ACC teams. The SEC has done such a great job pounding their chest over the last decade that a Wisconsin would happily sign up a Kentucky in order to get a win vs the vaunted SEC conference. The ACC doesn't have that luxury.

All in all I don't necessarily disagree with your overall view that 8+2 is better than 9+1. I just don't agree with how you're getting to that. It is a mathematical truth that forcing the ACC teams to each have 2 non-conference P5 teams scheduled every year is more challenging than only requiring 1 per team per season. I'm not saying or arguing that it's impossible. It is just absolutely, without a doubt, more complicated. I think your argument that "shut up, it's not that complicated you're making a mountain of a mole hill" is just wrong. And unconvincing.

I also disagree that playing more conference teams from our own conference is a bad thing. I hate that we only play FSU, Louisville, Clemson, etc. once every decade. I know you've complained that if we changed that we'd also have to play low-lifes like Wake and Cuse more often too. But you know what?; they're still conference teams and we have to take the good with the bad. There has to be give-and-take. You can't get anywhere if you can't compromise. So your argument that there's no benefit to playing more conference games isn't great either, IMO.

Your strongest argument is that the 9+1 format creates unbalanced conference home-away slates every year. It still works out to 9 home games and 9 away games on a 2 year cycle but every other season is going to suck. Especially for teams like Clemson, FSU, GT, and Louisville which have annual SEC rivals. It's obviously a less-than-perfect solution.

One of the reasons FSU and Clemson have lobbied against the extra conference game is because they like to have 7 home games every year. I understand why they want that and it sounds awesome as a fan and AD to have 7 home games every year. But it's arrogant and selfish...clearly a money grab and in the spirit of compromise it's a really crappy reason to dig their heels in and refuse to make a deal. In a regular season containing 12 games it really makes sense that half are home and half are away. ADs and fans don't want to recognize the logic there because it hurts their wallets or their feelings depending on who you are. But the simplest, most logical, solution is to have an even number of road and home games for all teams. Period. End.

I'm not going to pretend that I know of or have the magic solution to our scheduling woes. I don't. I wouldn't be sitting where I am if I did. There are definitely different pros and cons to the options available and depending on what your interests are those pros and cons will have different weights. You can't make everyone happy all the time so there will be winners and losers when all is said and done. That's just the way it is. The only point I really want to make is that your arguments aren't very convincing.

That's not the math of adding two teams. That's the math of misusing a scheduling event to reshuffle matches in an unacceptable manner.

#ACCmath.

You wouldn't believe the number of arguments I got in on those message boards in 2006-2007 over Brandon Flowers being a better corner than Malcolm Jenkins. Most of my distaste for tOSU began in that era, and our home and home actually lessened that significantly.

Well done sir. Smart idea asking TKP for help. I don't think I have ever seen a failed attempt on here when it comes to voting.

BC's next 5 games:
Clemson
Syracuse
NCSU
Louisville
Florida State

Good luck staying in 1st place BC.