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Iowa, and their BS Non-Conference Scheduling

DuckTownHusker

DuckTownHusker

Blackshirt Sith Lord
10 Year Member
Holy crap, they're as bad as KState scheduling a bunch of MAC and FCS teams. Not counting the annual CyHawk Game with ISU, Iowa has played just six different Power 5* teams over the last TWENTY-FIVE years (a total of 13 games). What a bunch of cupcake fakers.
  • 2015 - Pitt (ACC)
  • 2014 - Pitt (ACC)
  • 2010 - Arizona (PAC)
  • 2009 - Arizona (PAC)
  • 2008 - Pitt (Big East)
  • 2007 - Syracuse (Big East)
  • 2006 - Syracuse (Big East)
  • 2004 - Arizona State (PAC)
  • 2003 - Arizona State (PAC)
  • 2000 - KState, Nebraska (Big XII)
  • 1999 - Nebraska (Big XII)
  • 1998 - Arizona (PAC)
*Asterisk for "Power 5" because most all of these games pre-date the concept of P5. Depending on how you feel about Pitt/Syracuse in the Big East days, you could drop this number lower.
 

DuckTownHusker said:
Holy crap, they're as bad as KState scheduling a bunch of MAC and FCS teams. Not counting the annual CyHawk Game with ISU, Iowa has played just six different Power 5* teams over the last TWENTY-FIVE years (a total of 13 games). What a bunch of cupcake fakers.
  • 2015 - Pitt (ACC)
  • 2014 - Pitt (ACC)
  • 2010 - Arizona (PAC)
  • 2009 - Arizona (PAC)
  • 2008 - Pitt (Big East)
  • 2007 - Syracuse (Big East)
  • 2006 - Syracuse (Big East)
  • 2004 - Arizona State (PAC)
  • 2003 - Arizona State (PAC)
  • 2000 - KState, Nebraska (Big XII)
  • 1999 - Nebraska (Big XII)
  • 1998 - Arizona (PAC)
*Asterisk for "Power 5" because most all of these games pre-date the concept of P5. Depending on how you feel about Pitt/Syracuse in the Big East days, you could drop this number lower.
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Got to protect that D
 
In fairness an Iowa fan would say they’ve played 28 P5 non conference games in 25 years. Nebraska has played 31 over the same time period, including teams like TCU who are now a P5 team but not when we played them.

The argument should be the quality of those opponents … NU has played Oklahoma, Oregon, Miami FL, Washington, UCLA, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Southern Cal and V-Tech. The majority of these opponents were ranked when we played.

Iowa State wasn’t always that good during this stretch and was often Iowa’s only P5 opponent. ISU’s record is 130-177 for the last 25 years. They had 10 winning seasons over that time including each of the last 6 years … which means they were generally pretty bad for the first 19 years.

Wisconsin is as bad if not worse with their non conference scheduling … rarely playing a significant P5 opponent.

Maybe NU needs to follow suit until their performance warrants tougher scheduling.
 
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wcbsas said:
In fairness an Iowa fan would say they’ve played 28 P5 non conference games in 25 years. Nebraska has played 31 over the same time period, including teams like TCU who are now a P5 team but not when we played them.

The argument should be the quality of those opponents … NU has played Oklahoma, Oregon, Miami FL, Washington, UCLA, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Southern Cal and V-Tech. The majority of these opponents were ranked when we played.

Iowa State wasn’t always that good during this stretch and was often Iowa’s only P5 opponent. ISU’s record is 130-177 for the last 25 years. They had 10 winning seasons over that time including each of the last 6 years … which means they were generally pretty bad for the first 19 years.

Wisconsin is as bad if not worse with their non conference scheduling … rarely playing a significant P5 opponent.

Maybe NU needs to follow suit until their performance warrants tougher scheduling.
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Pal, unfortunately the cupcakes want Nebraska on THEIR schedules now.
 



wcbsas said:
I would ok with NU following Iowa and Wisconsin’s scheduling philosophy at the moment and I’d wager our record would benefit from such a strategy.
Click to expand...

Our record would almost certainly (hopefully!) benefit. But would our quality of play?
 
BleedinHuskerRed said:
Our record would almost certainly (hopefully!) benefit. But would our quality of play?
Click to expand...
Difference between 5-7 and 6-6 is one game but it does mean so much more.
- A bowl game along with a non losing season

Difference between 9-3 and 10-2 is one game but it does mean so much more.
- A top ten ranking and New Years 6 bowl versus fringe top 25 ranking and the Blue Bonnet Bowl.

Yes the quality of play would suffer but we are a program that needs more sustained success.
 
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wcbsas said:
Difference between 5-7 and 6-6 is one game but it does mean so much more.
- A bowl game along with a non losing season

Difference between 9-3 and 10-2 is one game but it does mean so much more.
- A top ten ranking and New Years 6 bowl versus fringe top 25 ranking and the Blue Bonnet Bowl.

Yes the quality of play would suffer but we are a program that needs more sustained success.
Click to expand...
those cup cakes also mean less injury to starters since they dont play as much, and valuable playing time to build depth for the backups. honestly, the west teams do it, and even the SEC does it. i have no problem playing teams that provide us a win and help build the teams confidence while potentially decreasing injuries for the starters. hell bama schedules a cupcake in november every year. its just good strategy.... its one thing to have someone else deal us a bad hand(big1 scheduling), but its just stupid for us to do deal our self a bad hand (non-conf scheduling).....
 
It goes back to the 9 game conference schedule. If you only have three non conference games, the reasons for not scheduling a P5 game are strong. If you have 8 conference games, schedule an interesting P5 game. I wish the B1G would move to an 8 game conference schedule but apparently it is not going to happen.
 
MiniDisk said:
those cup cakes also mean less injury to starters since they dont play as much, and valuable playing time to build depth for the backups. honestly, the west teams do it, and even the SEC does it. i have no problem playing teams that provide us a win and help build the teams confidence while potentially decreasing injuries for the starters. hell bama schedules a cupcake in november every year. its just good strategy.... its one thing to have someone else deal us a bad hand(big1 scheduling), but its just stupid for us to do deal our self a bad hand (non-conf scheduling).....
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In fairness to the SEC many of the top tier teams will play one non conference game against an upper tier P5 program. In past few years Alabama have played Louisville, Miami FL, Florida State … now the rest of their non conference games are teams really bad … like North Dakota and Georgia Southern.
 



Smart OOC scheduling is important to the overall success of a college football program. That being said, there has to be something in it for other P5 program to schedule Iowa for a (likely) home-and-home series. Let's be honest, the state of Iowa isn't exactly a football recruiting hotbed, so it's not that. Overall, the Hawkeyes were largely unremarkable the past @35 years, so playing the Hawkeyes (OOC) probably wouldn't generate that much excitement with opposing fan bases outside of Iowa State. Note that since non-conference games were (are) typically scheduled years in advance, I referenced a period of more than the 25 years used by OP.

One aspect that should also be considered is how easy/convenient it is to travel to Iowa City compared with Lincoln. It is much easier for an opposing team to fly to/from Lincoln than Iowa City. Lincoln, being the state capitol and having a respectable population, has infrastructure and transportation benefits. There are no regularly scheduled commercial flights to/from Iowa City airport and the runway at Iowa City Municipal Airport is too short for bigger jets (Boeing 7xx or equivalent). So Quad Cities or Des Moines would likely be the closest viable airport -- then bus to Iowa City.
 
We pretty much follow the same model- 1 P5, 2 cupcakes.
Oklahoma, Georgia Southern, NoDak
Fordham, Buffalo, Oklahoma
South Alabama, Colorado, Northern Illinois
Colorado, Troy, Bethune-Cookman
Arkansas St, Oregon, Northern Illinois

Those aren't exactly meat grinder non-conference schedules. Our P5 opponents are a bit better overall, but lets not pretend CU was a juggernaut.

Even with their "cupcake" schedule, the turd birds have beaten Frost every year so who else they played prior to that doesn't really matter.
 

dwc13 said:
Smart OOC scheduling is important to the overall success of a college football program. That being said, there has to be something in it for other P5 program to schedule Iowa for a (likely) home-and-home series. Let's be honest, the state of Iowa isn't exactly a football recruiting hotbed, so it's not that. Overall, the Hawkeyes were largely unremarkable the past @35 years, so playing the Hawkeyes (OOC) probably wouldn't generate that much excitement with opposing fan bases outside of Iowa State. Note that since non-conference games were (are) typically scheduled years in advance, I referenced a period of more than the 25 years used by OP.

One aspect that should also be considered is how easy/convenient it is to travel to Iowa City compared with Lincoln. It is much easier for an opposing team to fly to/from Lincoln than Iowa City. Lincoln, being the state capitol and having a respectable population, has infrastructure and transportation benefits. There are no regularly scheduled commercial flights to/from Iowa City airport and the runway at Iowa City Municipal Airport is too short for bigger jets (Boeing 7xx or equivalent). So Quad Cities or Des Moines would likely be the closest viable airport -- then bus to Iowa City.
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????

Cedar Rapids is 30 min away and probably has better air service than Lincoln.
 
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