Originally Posted by
FSF
Ok geniuses - what advantage is it to play McNeese? Nicholls? NW St?
Advantage 1: These games are played early in the season for a reason. We do not play them in November like the SEC schools do. We get to work on fundamentals. We get to see what works and what doesn't and we have much more room to work with. If we have QB questions, we get to work on them. Lot's of pros there.
Advantage 2: Attendence. Southern and Mcneese alone are two of our top attendences of all time.
If we are looking for legitimacy in the eyes of CUSA, AAC or even the Big 12(-2) playing and beating the Sisters of the Poor does not provide the excitement and WOW factor these leagues are looking at!
Every school in these conference play FCS schools and most of the in state for the exact same reasons we do. They do not care about this when it comes to conference realignment. If so, why are they taking former FCS schools???
Why do you assume we are guaranteed to get beat? Way to stay positive! And where in the hell did I say I want 3 or 4 money games? _____hat! Scheduling is only difficult when the AD is lazy and doesn't network or think outside the box - I don't see UH, or Memphis, or USM struggling to schedule?
Again, all of these schools play FCS opponents every year. Bad examples.
I also see a lot of the P5 going to begin scheduling more games against themselves - I understand there are teams in the P5 that schedule 1AA, but we are not P5, we are trying to make a names for ourselves and they way to do that is to play the kind of opponents (VT, Marshall, Army, Navy, Air Force Academy, UH, Rice, SMU, TCU, SDSU, ECU, UCF, USF, GT, Baylor, etc).
Do you think it is that easy to get these schools to come to Cajun Field? They are trying to build winnable schedules as well. Not to mention it takes home and two away games for the bigger schools. Look, we have Boise, Tulsa and La Tech coming in and Tulane last year AND we have already beaten two of these teams (ECU and SDSU) in bowl games. That's not to shabby.
You old timers that liked the Southland conference can go watch the McNeeses' and Lamar's of the world,
I am 29 years old..not sure if that makes me an "old timer." I don't want to play Mcneese every year but every 4-5 years or so won't cripple us. There is absolutely nothing wrong with scheduling a good mixture of Southland teams along with a Grambling and Southern. Win/win for everyone
but I would much rather see us play the types of teams that we should be near or at least measure ourselves against than these teams that do nothing for GENERAL FAN EXCITEMENT - you want to build a brand, you want to build a demand, play schools whose names alone draw excitement and interest - we haven't played a decent schedule in a long time - thanks to the suck belt mostly - but also because of little swimmer boy - I'll give him props for the Boise St series, but that's it - he needs to get out of Lafayette and go visit places outside of the Crowley/Opelousas/Breaux Bridge circle and go visit these people and get us a better schedule - hell in the scheme of things an $800 flight to secure a game with any of the ones I mentioned would pay for itself in spades from general fan interest - quit think small time idiots - think. Big time!
The way to get fan excitement is to win. Having a very managable schedule, along with a talented team will help us get to the level we want to get to. There is nothing wrong with playing both FCS, G5 and one BCS (money) school a year. That to me is the perfect schedule. The conference schedule is bad, very bad but for now we are stuck with it. We need to take advantage and beat everyone in the conference. The schedules are built the way they are for a reason and it is very important and difficult.