SLC says 12 is perfect number

Published 8:06 am Thursday, July 28, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At present the pet peeve/passion of Southland Conference Commissioner Tom Burnett is being held hostage by the whims of the calendar.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s a fickle opponent.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sometimes it cooperates. Most years it doesn’t.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Burnett, always at the forefront in fighting for the Football Championship Subdivision, can’t understand why his schools can’t play 12 regular-season games every year like the Football Bowl Subdivision guys do.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">As it stands now, it’s almost like waiting on a lunar eclipse.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The planets will align and the calendar will work out right — with enough available Saturdays from the start of September to Thanksgiving — to fit 12 games in comfortably.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Then they’re allowed.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not this year. Or next. It will work out in 2019 and not again until 2024 (and 2025).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That doesn’t seem like a good way to decide your scheduling, Burnett said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He was on his soapbox again Wednesday at the Southland Conference Media Days at L’Auberge, fighting for that</span> <span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">annual</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">12th game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Some FCS conference commissioners agree with him. Some are probably on the fence.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And those who disagree? By now they’re probably avoiding Burnett in the hallway.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s that big of a zealot about it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The big boys in FBS used to do the same calendar two-step with scheduling. When it fell right, they did it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But once they fell in love with that 12th game — mostly at the cash register — it was simple enough.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They took it out of the calendar’s hands and scheduled an even dozen regardless of how many Saturdays fell in the window.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s what Burnett will propose for FCS (the earliest it could go into effect would be 2018).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So far, only the Ohio Valley Conference has joined hands in the fight.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s worth noting that adding a 12th game wouldn’t force anybody to play 12 games. It would be voluntary.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For instance, you can bet the Ivy League will never do it. But it also doesn’t partake of the FCS playoffs.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Others may just not want any conference doing something they’re not in favor of, for fear it might give them some advantage.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Opinions vary,” Burnett said. “But I heard enough during the June commissioners meeting and in some follow-up conversations since then to keep the concept alive.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he admitted that, if the vote was today, he would have no idea how it would turn out.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Burnett has a dog in the hunt — his conference.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The 11 games puts the Southland in a scheduling pickle, partly by its own design. Its members play nine conference games. That leaves only two dates to play with.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s not much wiggle room.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You know how nonconference scheduling works in the FCS. You’ve got to have at least one “money” game against an FBS team, usually a mismatch, to balance the budget.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At the Southland level, it’s also customary to host a reverse-money game, bringing in a Division II or lower school for pocket change.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That makes for some contrasting nonconference schedules. Neither is likely to end up being a very competitive game for fans.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For instance, this year Northwestern State’s nonconference games are Baylor … and Kentucky Wesleyan.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">When Southland schools play a Baylor, you can bet it’s a road game, hence the payoff.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">McNeese can’t even get Louisiana-Lafayette to drive 70 miles to Cowboy Stadium.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So it pretty well assures that a Southland team will have no more than one nonconference home game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The nine-game conference schedule means that every other year you have only four home conference games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Do the math: 4 conference games + 1 nonconference = 5. And most teams like to have at least six home games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The two (usually mismatched) nonconference games don’t do much for adding data points when SLC teams are considered for the playoffs either.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The expected loss is not likely to be held against them. But beating up on Oklahoma Panhandle State isn’t going to help them any either.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Burnett said the Southland’s 11 athletic directors are pleased with playing nine conference games, even though one might ask, What’s the difference in eight or nine when neither is a true round-robin schedule?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s kind of a tradition, he said, dating to when the conference had six or seven teams to play.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“If this gets shot down,” Burnett said, “Our athletic directors might have to revisit the nine-game (conference) schedule.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I see a better argument for moving to 12 games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">With the FCS playoffs still presumably starting Thanksgiving weekend, you’d have to move the opening of the season up a week — and that might be the best part of the deal.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">More and more, it seems, the FCS schools are struggling for recognition under the onslaught of televised FBS games — basically, all of them, depending on your cable plan.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But what if the kickoff to the football season — moved up to the last weekend in August — was a weekend’s worth of televised FCS games?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">All you hear from the middle of June until Labor Day weekend finally arrives is “Football season can’t get here soon enough.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They’d get watched.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It would mean scheduling some high-profile, nonconference FCS games just for that Kickoff Weekend.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s been done, to a degree.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Two years ago Sam Houston State played Eastern Washington on that playing date. Last year it was Montana against North Dakota State. This year it’s Charleston Southern vs. North Dakota State.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But those are just single games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What if, with America starving for football, you were to make that final August weekend a celebration of FCS, with six, seven, maybe eight or nine games on national television?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Let the FCS have center stage for the day.</span>

<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">—</span>

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