College football has too many cupcake nonconference games

Congratulations, you made it through a painful first weekend of college football. Hopefully you didn’t plan your Saturday around ESPN’s game schedule (except maybe the night games).

You got to see Florida dominate Miami University of Ohio. You had the privilege (cough, cough) of watching Texas get a win against some school named Rice. Never heard of it? Me neither.

And, of course, you had the opportunity to spend three hours at Memorial Stadium watching the Hoosiers beat the tar out of a Towson team that finished last season 2-9 while competing in the Football Championship Subdivision.

Let me make this very clear: something has to be done about the cupcake tour that is the first week of the college football season. There have to be rules. These games are a waste of everyone’s time, especially that of the fans who pay ridiculous prices for tickets to see Iowa roll over Eastern Illinois, 37-7.

This is the one week every year where every sports fan in America is spending his time in front of the tube watching college football. The NFL regular season hasn’t yet begun and the MLB playoffs are still a month away.

College athletic directors across the nation have the chance to grab those fans by the balls and capture their attention for the duration of the season. Schedule the nonconference matchups we all want to see — Notre Dame vs. Cincinnati, for instance. Maybe Florida vs. Texas.

IU Athletics Director Fred Glass could have scheduled a school such as Louisville or Cincinnati or Kentucky. Instead, he came up with a riveting nonconference tilt of Towson, Western Kentucky, Akron and Arkansas State.

That absolutely cannot happen. But I understand why it does. Teams from the power conferences are motivated to schedule the worst possible teams for their nonconference slates because those games become virtually automatic victories. The smaller schools want to play these games because they get paid to do so.

When you pick these matchups apart and look at them for what they really are, they are unwinnable games for teams such as IU. If the Hoosiers beat Towson 51-17, fans and columnists (such as myself) look for the failures in a game full of successes.

But if they lose, nobody associated with the team will ever live it down. Just ask Michigan fans how they feel about Appalachian State.

A loss to a small school automatically makes the entire season a failure. If the Hoosiers were to lose to Western Kentucky on Sept. 18, God forbid, the interest in the team would shrink to a point close to nonexistence. A coach could lose his job over such a loss.

Turner Gill’s tenure at Kansas could be short after a 6-3 loss to — wait for it — North Dakota State on Saturday.

If I were in charge of things, I would establish two rules to solve this problem, or some of it.

First, at least half of a school’s nonconference games must be played against teams from another power conference (For IU, against SEC, ACC, Big East, Big 12 or Pac 10).

That way, IU could still have two patsies on its schedule — say Towson and Akron — while playing two more legitimate opponents — perhaps Louisville and Kentucky. The Hoosiers’ nonconference games would better prepare them for Big Ten opponents. Think they will be ready to play anybody in the conference after their first three games this year?

Second, schools cannot pay smaller schools to play them at home. Instead, the power conference schools must agree to a home-and-home series with the smaller schools.

It just rubs me the wrong way that athletics directors, such as Glass, are paying schools to play their football team. Are you kidding me? In this scenario, IU would play Akron at home this year and then go there in 2011.

These rules will never be implemented — I know that. College coaches want these built-in wins on their schedule.

IU coach Bill Lynch was asked after Thursday’s game if he was excited about the fact the Hoosiers’ nonconference schedule is going to be upgraded in the coming years.

His response was understandable.

“I certainly don’t want to apologize for the schedule we’re playing now,” he said. “Because the Big Ten, once you get in it, it’s tough. Every win is so important in Division I football now because the goal of everybody is to play in the postseason.”

Scheduling cupcakes is okay, but it must be done in moderation. Who can take IU seriously when it plays the nonconference schedule it does? More importantly, who’s going to watch these games?

Something for Glass to think about when he prepares the schedules for the next five or
10 years.