You may have missed it, but Pitt is hard at work lining up its 1-AA patsy home game for 2007.
Pitt is close to a deal that would bring Grambling State to Heinz Field for a game against the Panthers in 2007.
Only if their band is coming as well. I’d say it’s part of the problem with only 7 other conference foes, but so many other schools are just looking for the home patsy and going with the 1-AA route that it is something more.
That brings me to this article on football scheduling in college.
Welcome to the always opportunistic and ethically opaque world of nonconference college football scheduling. A world in which the sanctity of a contract means little — less if the contract does not contain a “liquidated damage” (i.e., buyout) clause. In which an incoming coach or athletic director (or major television network) can erase an existing game off the “future schedules” page with relative impunity. You’ve heard of the Outback Bowl? Welcome to the Backout Bowl.
Why is it that the only thing “binding” in college atletics seems to be a kid’s letter of intent? Coaching and AD contracts, nonconference scheduling, TV deals. All negotiable and easily changed.
Like records, nonconference football contracts were made to be broken. In the 1990s, Nevada and Oregon entered into an agreement to play three games. The Wolf Pack would visit Eugene in 2000 and ’03. The Ducks would play in Reno in ’04. Nevada honored both visits to Autzen Stadium, losing both times.
Then, in the spring of ’04, Wolf Pack associate assistant athletic director Rory Hickok received a disturbing phone call. “It was Oregon,” Hickok recalls. “They told us that they had an opportunity to play a home-and-home with Oklahoma but that they could only do it on our date [Sept. 18, 2004]. They asked not to cancel the game, but to postpone it.”
As one Oregon athletic official says now, “I suspect Nevada wasn’t overly thrilled.”
Nevada had neglected to include a fiscal penalty clause in the contract. The Wolf Pack had little leverage in compelling Oregon to honor the deal. The Ducks held the cards, and Nevada knew it. The NCAA was not about to step in and force Oregon to play the game, nor was the Pac-10 or the Western Athletic Conference.
“We provide for a fair amount of institutional autonomy,” says NCAA spokesperson Erik Christianson. “We don’t get involved in contractual issues between our member institutions.”
Of course, if a student-athlete signs a letter of intent to play at Oregon or Nevada and then reneges on that agreement, the NCAA does get involved.
Back to Nevada. If you are Hickok, what can you do? You know that ABC engineered the Oklahoma-Oregon matchup as a nationally televised game. You do not want to alienate ABC’s sister network, ESPN (“We’re very much interested in whatever exposure we can get,” says Hickok), and you do not want to alienate the mighty Ducks, either.
If you are Hickok, you swallow your pride. You allow ABC/ESPN and Oregon to find you a replacement opponent. You play Buffalo, a program that would win two games that season. You wonder how many of your fans headed to Lake Tahoe that day instead of to Mackay Stadium because of the switch. How much revenue you lost.
“Tentatively,” says Hickok, “we are scheduled to play Oregon here in 2010.”
Currently, that is a (cough, cough) gentleman’s agreement between the two schools. Nothing is in writing. And if Oregon can see fit to renege on a contract, how strong is that handshake agreement for the 2010 game?
“We don’t even have that game penciled in yet,” says an Oregon official.
I’m unaware of Pitt pulling stunts like this (witness the trips to Toledo and Ohio the last couple of years), but let’s not kid ourselves. Pitt would do the same thing with the opportunity. Read the whole article.
The problem has just gotten more accute with the addition of the 12th game. Schools are not looking for good games. They are looking for good money. Whether it is setting up the patsy home game even with a 1-AA team rather than risk playing a good 1-A opponent. Or bailing on a game for the increased TV opportunity.
Even the patsies are doing it. Buffalo bailed on an older deal with WVU this season to take a bigger payout to go play Auburn. This happened in February, leaving the Hoopies scrambling to find anyone. They got 1-AA Eastern Washington.
That’s the other reason so many schools are going the 1-AA route. The price for a patsy 1-A opponent is higher than ever with the increased demand. Buffalo was offered so much more money to play Auburn that even after they payed the penalty to WVU for skipping out, they were still making more off the deal.
