Michigan vs LSU in football? Discussions being had
There are only 6 Power 5 teams Michigan has never faced.
Clemson
Iowa State
Louisville
LSU
TCU
Texas Tech
According to the LSU AD, he has spoken to Warde about a Michigan-LSU game or games in the future.
During a discussion about scheduling, Woodward was asked about what national traditional power LSU had never played, Woodward paused, smiled, then quipped, "Go Blue, huh?"
He continued a moment later: "I can assure you without breaking any confidences that the AD there is a Louisiana guy. We've had conversations, and we're just hoping that one day we can get something done."
Yes please. I approve this message.
NO THANKS.
So you'd rather see Michigan schedule Hawaii, UMass (for recruiting of course), or Western instead?
I'm sure he'd rather see Hawaii, and UMass to get through September without a loss and keep UM in the conversation for the playoff, which would be pretty good for recruiting (of course)
I'd rather see LSU-type teams in the playoffs; which are hard to get to when you schedule excess top 5 teams OOC, especially in the first few weeks. Why make it harder? The post-season is where traditional powers are supposed to meet, at the pinnacle of their seasons.
what Chris? this is exposure in the recruit hotbed...and if we WIN ?
The way football programs schedule things, this won't happen for another 10 years, so sure why not.
We also weirdly have a better recruiting class than they do this year. Maybe by the time we play them it would be more even?
But we don’t though... we are ranked higher right now because we have more total commits. Our average recruit rank is 88.93 and theirs is 92.84.
Ah, I see. I knew the composite also factored in class size, but thought that it might still even out if we end up parting ways with some of the low-end recruits as has been suggested; one of them is also a 2-star punter which is clearly anchoring the star ratings. But point taken.
I know Brian and several others won't agree with me, but I see no benefit to scheduling high-end out of conference opponents.
For the love of College Football, or is that no longer a thing? I personally would love to see a Home and Home with LSU, as would the entire country I would imagine. I would even make the trip to Baton Rouge and would love every second of it.
If the college football powers-that-be came to their senses, they’d institute an 8-team playoff with champs of the Power 5 conferences and 3 at large teams. That means teams could play meaningful OOC games without fear that a loss dooms their NC hopes.
Force alignment into eight 16-team conferences with east/west set-up. You play 7 games within your division and 4 games cross division. No protected crossover games, so in a four year period you'd play all cross division teams home and away. No out of conference games. Division winners go to the conference title games (i.e. 1st round of the playoff of 16 team playoff). The 8 remaining teams are ranked 1 thru 8 based on the previous year's playoff outcome, because without non-conference games you have no concrete measuring stick on which conference is better until the playoff.
You could set up multiple NIT-esque 16-team brackets to fill out a bowl season so all teams are guaranteed 12 games minimum. Or throw the 8 conference championship game losers back in the pot and fill out a bowl schedule like we currently do.
IMO, that's what whoever overthrows the NCAA should do.
Uh...That could still hurt a teams playoff chances. When you bring in tie breakers, and the overall SEC bias, they would find a way to screw some teams.
I agree. At large bids are dumb and diminish the importance of the regular season, imo.
I'd be on board with playing LSU, as long as the game in Ann Arbor was played in November.
Hell, play them the week before OSU. Indiana wrecks us, without beating us, that week every year anyway.
Except you have fans that demand perfection every year, coaches coaching for their jobs when they lose 2-3 games. We’re at the point with the CFP where 2 losses might be enough to keep you out.
Michigan plays a tough schedule already. We played 6 teams last year that finished ranked in the top 15. Had we won our division it would have been 7. So if your goals and expectations for your program are to win your conference and make the CFP, it does your team absolutely no good to schedule like this. Odds are you’re not going to play that many high quality teams and come out of it unscratched.
I would personally love to see Michigan-LSU. I think the atmosphere would be awesome. I think it would be fun to see. But the expectations we put on these teams makes it not a good idea. If we accept the fact that Michigan’s current ceiling with the way we do business is to be a 10-11 win team, then sure. Have fun and schedule some awesome matchups. But if you want to piss and moan when we don’t make the conference title and don’t make it to the CFP, then you should want as many easy wins as possible on that schedule.
You simply can’t have it both ways. We can’t spend half of our season playing top 15 opponents and then piss and moan when we lose a couple. It’s inevitable. We don’t bring in the talent to do that because we haven’t had the success in recent history to attract that talent naturally and we aren’t willing to play against the rules to go and get it.
Well stated, couldn't have done it better. There's a real double standard here with the SEC playing more cupcake teams than the B1G conference.
Ideally, if all Power 5 conferences had the same standard, then we could see an honest CF playoff system take place That's pie in the sky at this time.
I'd love to see how well Clemson would do in they were in BIG East division. I'd bet $$ on them losing one or two regular season games each year. (for example)
The thing is it wouldn't like be a Home-and-Home. It will be some one-off game in New Orleans that will be 95% LSU fans and if Michigan loses a bunch of slack-jawed yokels will be able to talk about how great SEC footbaw is.
I'm fine playing high-end teams if they do what LSU-Wisconsin did and at least play those games in different locales (even if they wind up being NFL stadiums). But I have my doubts that actually happens.
Why would we simultaneously “accept” that Michigan can’t/won’t reach the levels of Bama/Clemson/OSU yet also worry about losing to LSU in the first or second game of the season?
It’s not simultaneous. It’s either or. If it’s just about having fun matchups and all that, sure, schedule LSU. Itll be a blast. But you have to accept that we aren’t going to be on the level of OSU, Bama and Clemson.
If it’s about winning your conference and going to the CFP, then there is no benefit to scheduling like this. You’re better off scheduling cupcakes and heading into the OSU game at 11-0 or 10-1. The more tough games you put on that schedule, the more likely you are to go into the OSU game with 2+ losses and it won’t matter if you win or not
I +1'd you because I agree, but I hate that it's true because those big time OOC match-ups in September are awesome and the current CFP format is incentivizing teams to avoid them. We need some type of SOS factor in the CFP decision-making but I don't have much faith the powers that be will ever do something sensible
You hit the nail on the head. Go look at Iowa’s 2015 schedule and tell me how soft that was, and it was Charmin soft. They were one drive at the Big Ten championship game from playing for a national title. If Michigan played in a soft division you could probably convince me, but they don’t.
Also, a trip to LSU is an automatic loss, so that ensures you at least a 3 loss season in whatever year Michigan plays there. That leads to more of the same that we’re already mad about anyways. Yes it’d be cool to watch, but if that’s the only benefit, I’d again ask: Why do it?
Because it'd be cool to watch.
Yep, the season is too short and every game too important for it to ultimately make sense to schedule strong OOC games. At the end of the day, people really only care about your record and how far you got. If we played in the Big Ten West and scheduled OOC games like Wisconsin did, we'd be winning 10-11 games a year. There's really no pay off to playing Notre Dame or other challenging teams in the non-conference
Yea cause if they did that now the top 10 would consist of 1-8 SEC #9/10 OSU/Clemson
I used to feel the same way, and sometimes revert to it.
But, playing the best does have u huge upside. When your team is “ascending” to quote coach. Even when you lose the game an ascending team gets better for sure. And that’s usually evident to all even begrudgingly. I struggle to recall(maybe I’m missing it) the team that truely suffered the “we lost in wk2 to XX and then didn’t get our chance at redemption when it became evident it was due”
More likely if your team is on a trajectory and really is among the best it will get its chance. Michigan 2016 was right there and got robbed of its chance by O’Neal but the redemption was certainly there to be had.
OTOH, if your team is just hanging on & hoping (2016 ND) you really don’t want the humiliation that come with exposure.
Shrinky-dink thinking; what made Amurrica great.
Would love to see home/away series with Clemson. Not just because I’m a UM fan living in SC...well yeah, that’s why.
That entire list of teams we’ve never played...let’s play all of them. Those would be great games.
No benefit, no thanks. Although it would be fun to attend a night game in Death Valley.
Incoming neutral game site.
LSU would be cool but I'd be even more interested in a home-and-home with TCU.
I think we could go into Fort Worth and win.
One person's ranking of hypothetical away games (based on location, game atmosphere, team profile, and "tradition"):
1. LSU (raucous atmosphere, night game, high-profile team, distinct culture, deep-fried alligator)
2. Clemson (SC upcountry is nice but based mostly on team profile)
... big drop ...
3. TCU (plenty to do in DFW, team that is Iowa/Wisconsin of the Big 12 in player development)
4. Louisville (all town)
... another drop ...
5. Texas Tech (dry dusty location is bleak but at least different)
6. Iowa State (brings nothing IMO unless you're a Matt Campbell fan)
I would love the home and home with LSU--great matchup and I would make a big effort to make it to Baton Rouge (coming from Tampa, so much closer than A2 actually). While I'd love to play Clemson in football, my SC friends typically do not speak highly of Clemson as an area. SC is one of the most beautiful states generally IMO.
Put Texas Tech waaaay at the bottom of your list.
Imagine EL and that fanbase in Texas. That's Texas Tech.
I can tell you it was fun watching those fans leave the stadium in disgust when the Maize and Blue smoked them in the College World Series last year!
How about we focus on beating our rivals first? The fuck.
Well Harbaugh is 3-2 against PSU and has won 3 of the last 4 against MSU. We also just shitcanned Notre Dame by 31 as they fuck off until 2033.
Might I add that Michigan has handled Maryland quite well! Checkmate, naysayers.
....nice job of amnesia as you seem to have forgotten another rival and I don't mean Rutgers, or is it because of the utter humiliations we don't consider them one?
The rest of college football is 9-67 against them since 2012. 3 of those are osu losses have come to Clemson.
Easier said than done to win that game right now.
So using your logic let us add another opponent of that caliber and we should be happy with just another sound beating. No thanks, that will not help recruiting.
You're reading words that aren't there. I'm merely sharing the article.
I'm all for gaming the schedule. I don't care if we're playing a D3 opponent, I'll be there.
How the fuck are those two things remotely related?
Totally agree. I don’t know why we haven’t cancelled all games except Ohio State and just play them every week until we beat them. Get on it, Harbaugh!
Non-conference schedule should be Clemson, Iowa State and Louisville one year then LSU, TCU, and Texas Tech the next year ... problem solved