Football Scheduling Foibles-Part 1

Ok class, today's assignment: You are the Athletic Director of a bad Big 10 football team. Based on your diligent research of NCAA rules regarding bowl eligibility, you know that it takes only 6 wins (used to be out of 11 games, now 12) to be bowl-eligible. You also know that the Big 10 is tough with 8 games, 4 at home and 4 away. Thus, how you schedule non-conference games is crucial to your program getting to bowl games and getting out of the gutter. What do you do?

A) Schedule games against mostly teams from BCS Conferences like Arizona, Oregon, Rutgers, Syracuse, Southern California, Washington State, California, UCLA? Or

B) Schedule games against weak teams like Louisiana-Monroe, Temple, Louisiana-Lafayette, Buffalo, Troy State, Florida Atlantic, and make sure you play a Division 1-AA team each year because you can use one win against a Division 1-AA team every four years to count towards bowl eligibility?

Well kiddies, Option B is Minnesota. Minnesota hired Glen Mason in 1997 (same time that COACH Guenther hired the vaunted Ron Turner). Minnesota has gone to 6 bowl games since 1997. Good for them!!!

In contrast, Option A is Illinois. Illinois has gone to 4 bowl games since 1992, Mr. Guenther's first year on the job as AD.

Does Ron Guenther have something against making bowl games? Come on, schedule some weak teams to help Illinois get bowl-eligible!