Sly Fox wrote: ↑October 28th, 2022, 3:08 pm
Since we stepped up we primarily have signed 2-for-1 deals. The guarantee games haven't been quite as common. We could ask more when we first came up because we considered a sure W. At this stage, paying $1.5M or so to come to a P5's house is MUCH riskier.
As for the argument no P5 teams want to play us for fear of losing - App St was scheduled again by MI after their upset. UCF, Troy,ULM,Boise St, Fresno St, SDSU, Memphis, Cinci,SMU,Houston - ( and on and on ) kept getting P5 games after upsetting P5 teams and kept getting big checks. As for 2 for 1 - those are the only series we have won a P5 game. Our 1 off future buy games - we lost USC ( I don’t recall any other ). I imagine if Hugh told Ian to get 1 P5 game and cancel someone else for 23-26 - it is doable. I just think trying to get rid of 7-8 games over next 5 years was a major chore and simply easier to not try and hold ACC teams feet to the fire when they “volunteered” to free up our schedule. I don’t see getting 1 P5 game a year after 2027 a big deal. BUT for those wondering why we can’t fill our home stadium or travel well to a bowl playing in CUSA - I am saying you simply have unreal expectations. None of the CUSA team fans travel, especially those distances. Can we sell out a CUSA home championship game? I would certainly hope so ( if format has 1 seed home advantage - not even sure how CUSA does it ). LU will just have to hope if a G5 upsets a P5 - that same team has 2 conference losses and LU goes undefeated and gets the Playoff Spot. If we were in Sunbelt - ODU,Coastal,Marshall,JMU,APP St - all home sellouts. Hopefully - AAC, Sunbelt, MWC beat each other up every year and our SOS isn’t an issue during this stretch. Note - the Playoff Committee so far has emphasized SOS consistently when ranking teams.