The various Big East Notebook stories from around the country echo that familiar theme from the coaches after the weekly Big East coaches teleconference.
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez came up with an idea during Monday’s Big East coaches’ teleconference that drew unanimous support from his peers.
“If there could be one rule change to make in Division I football,” mused Rodriguez, “it would be to have a scrimmage game or an exhibition against somebody else before the start of the season.”
Rodriguez is getting ready to take an inexperienced Mountaineer team to Syracuse for a nationally-televised season opener on Sunday afternoon.
It’s the only game pitting two conference foes against each other on opening weekend.
“That’s the thing about Division I football,” said Rodriguez. “The first time you play, it counts – and for us it counts a lot because it’s a league game.”
The attraction for coaches of a preseason scrimmage or exhibition is the chance to find out how their players – and coaching staffs – react in the heat of battle without running the risk of a loss in September that could come home to roost when bowl bids are issued in December.
I guess it’s a good question to ask considering the fact that most of the Big East teams are playing non-patsy games to open the season: WVU vs. Syracuse, USF at Penn St., rivalry game Louisville vs. Kentucky, Rutgers at Illinois and of course Pitt vs. ND.
So the reporters ran with it, getting everyone to comment.
What else is new? College football coaches are notorious worriers, a fraternity of detail-oriented fanatics who take pride in preparation and believe there are insufficient hours in the day or days in the week to get their teams ready to roll.
The rules of Division I-A football feed those flames of doubt by prohibiting teams from playing preseason exhibition games or even controlled scrimmages against another team. High school teams do it. Professional teams do it. Division III teams do it. So do I-A teams in other sports.
Football is the exception, and Monday morning the league’s coaches wondered why.
“If we could add one that doesn’t count I’d be all for it,” said Connecticut coach Randy Edsall, whose Huskies open Thursday night at home against non-league foe Buffalo. “Our soccer team just had two exhibitions. The basketball team has them. In football, it just doesn’t happen for whatever reason.”
“The biggest thing that has been kind of different for me is we don’t have preseason games,” said Pittsburgh coach Dave Wannstedt, whose last stop was coaching the Miami Dolphins. “You have four NFL preseason games. Even high schools around here have scrimmages. That’s the unknown of this whole college experience I’m still trying to figure out.”
From a selfish, fan perspective I can think of a good reason not to: money. Specifically they would want more of mine. Every school would want to host and sell tickets — likely add the cost to the season ticket package as well — meaning there would need to be 2 scrimmage games for each school to ensure at least one home scrimmage.
More repetitive notebook pieces focusing on scrimmages or exhibition games can be found from New Jersey and West Virginia.
I other notebook summaries there is the issue of heightened expectations at UConn and Louisville.
After leading Connecticut to a bowl game in the school’s third year in Division 1-A ranks last season, coach Randy Edsall knows he has created a monster in terms of expectations.
Never mind that the Huskies have to replace record-setting quarterback Dan Orlovsky or that seven of the 10 offensive linemen on the two-deep have never played a snap heading into the opener at home against Buffalo on Thursday. The 31,000 people who bought season tickets for this fall did so for one reason: They expect more of the same.
Still, everyone covering the Big East knows the Pitt-ND game is the biggest on the opening weekend slate.
For some of the straight questions asked of Coach Wannstedt, PantherLair (Rivals.com) posted a transcript of part of the teleconference.
Reporter from the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette: How well do you know Charlie Weiss? In your first time in college you may be facing a guy that knows you better than anyone else in college football.
Coach Wannstedt: That’s true. Charlie and I are friends personally just from our acquaintance through the NFL for the last 10 or 15 years. We probably know each other better from an X and O standpoint than from a personal standpoint. It’s going to come down to this. You can only do what your players can execute. You can only do what your players have time to comprehend and learn. For me to sit here and think we are going to be able to do a lot of things we could do with the Miami Dolphin defense is really unrealistic. It is the same thing I am sure Charlie is going through. We would like to do some things but I don’t think we have a Jason Taylor on our team. He’ll be facing the same thing with some of his players. That is going to be the biggest adjustment. There are things we know about each other and things we would like to do but can the players go out and execute it? We will see.
[Emphasis added.]
