September 26th, 2011 at 9:55 PM ^
Sweet. A $69 UMASS game. Just what we need.
September 26th, 2011 at 9:57 PM ^
Already play Bama and Air Force. Wasn't going to be a big name.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:00 PM ^
Bama is in TX and Air Force is far from a marquee, exciting name. For the price our tickets, I'd prefer a sexier tomato can.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
What I'm saying is the schedule is already tuff, they weren't going to schedule a big name. If you wanna little more cheese, your not going to get it from me. At least you can afford season tix.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:03 AM ^
I can't even afford an iphone.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:39 PM ^
UMass by itself is pretty lame, but our other OOC games are Alabama, Air Force (never an easy team to defend against), and Notre Dame. This game will be in between either AF and ND, or ND and Purdue on the road. It makes sense to put a relative breather in there.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:00 PM ^
Yeah, take away my fan card, but I'm not buying season tickets next year. Getting married and grad school are expensive enough as is. I dont want to pay a few hundred for essentially the MSU ticket.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:13 PM ^
The Big Ten really screwed up by having the Nebraska and OSU games be home in the same years. If they'd put the NU game on the road this year, we could have had a marquee November home game every year. Instead now we get two on odd-numbered years and none on even-numbered years. And since Nebraska will never go off our schedule, it'll never change. It's irritating.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:19 PM ^
Plus, Notre Dame and Alabama away :(. I'd actually like to buy a season "away-package", too bad they don't offer it.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:24 PM ^
I've learned to accept that we'll have a crappy nonconference home slate in years when we play ND in South Bend. That doesn't really bother me. But it gets me that the Big Ten had an opportunity to give us a balanced home schedule every year and blew it. How could the league office not figure out that it might be a bad idea to have NU and OSU be on the same home/away rotation?
These geniuses will probably put Wisconsin on the same rotation when they go back on our schedule.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:26 PM ^
Yeah, totally agree. It's just bad luck that those two away games ALSO landed on the year where we have alabama and Notre Dame away.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:32 PM ^
How much do student tickets cost these days? Are they the same cost for grad students as undergrad?
September 26th, 2011 at 10:44 PM ^
They're the same, but I'm having to rely on the sole income of my wife/meager stipend next year rather than the substantial income that can be acquired by begging from my parents.
I think the student tix are like 25 per game? Something like that.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:46 PM ^
It was $250 for the season this year.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:06 PM ^
Call me crazy, but $30 a pop is completely ridiculous for student tickets.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:17 PM ^
Because i would be in hog heaven for $30 dollar tickets going nuts all game.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:43 PM ^
Most expensive in the Big 10. And PSU's the only school that's even close. TSIO is a relative bargain at $165 for the season.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:17 AM ^
OSU is $165 because it only includes games that occur when class is in session. So its $165 for 5 games.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:29 AM ^
Interesting. And what a rip off. Can students get the early season games (basically most of September) at face? Or are those just sold to the gen'l public?
September 27th, 2011 at 11:09 AM ^
They are available to students at like $35/game.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:21 AM ^
And the people at the gate have gotten way more militant about checking IDs. Two years ago if the picture looked at all like you, it was good. Now they are requesting second forms of ID and taking away borrowed MCards, which sucks.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:29 PM ^
Just playing devil's advocate here, but I'm sure a lot more went into it than what our maize goggles want to see. Without looking at how this effects every other schedule in the B1G, which it does, i'm sure the ripple effect of having to flip-flop a different game for said teams make this extremely difficult to do without pissing off too many people.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:46 PM ^
Well the only two teams it should affect is Nebraska and us. They don't have a big marquee game in conference, they haven't been here long enough. Even if the B1G came up with this schedule, it should be an easy call from DB to Osbourn saying, "hey can we switch it". Obvious disclaimer that I'm not saying that DB effed that up, but I don't think if we wanted one home and one away that it should have been a big issue.
Also, MSU is playing at Northwestern two years in a row in order to flip the schedule. Obviously this would be a bit easier to swallow with a team like Northwestern than with Nebraska, but the Big Ten has done it before.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:52 PM ^
My point was that nebraska would then have to flip another home game to an away game in order to accomodate this and keep the 4/4 balance of home and aways. Therefore NW, MSU, Iowa, OSU would have to come to them, and the cycle continues.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:57 PM ^
I would think we could still have worked something out. We're going to a 4/5 and 5/4 format in what, 2016? Even if we had to take a hit for a year, it seems worth it with the reality of our current scheduling situation, especially since we're stuck with this now.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:02 PM ^
Like I said, devils advocate, but we're only looking at it from our perspective. The easy answer is nebraska going to 3/5, which obviously isn't going to fly with them. I guess I'm just confident that someone on our side saw this coming when this was still in the planning phases, and the compromise had to be made. Call me naive!
September 27th, 2011 at 8:25 AM ^
has Boise State, Ohio, Nebraska, and Notre Dame all at home next I don't think they would have minded. All they have at home this year is us and Wisconsin.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:27 PM ^
to Nebraska will be in October next year, so the weekends of division aren't necessarily set in stone.
Next year we get Iowa the week before Ohio, for all we know that could be for the division championship.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:43 PM ^
When Penn St. rotates on in 2013, they will sit opposite Nebraska and Ohio. It is likely that Wisconsin will as well when they come on in 2015. And we'll see more of these two teams when we go to 9 games in 2017.
2011+2012: schedule not balanced. After that: likely pretty balanced.
September 27th, 2011 at 10:18 AM ^
They really should have broken that up for us. I hate the weak schedule in the even years.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
Bama, Air Force, Oklahoma, Notre Dame would have been much cooler, but comments like this are getting a little rediculout. I get that as fans we want to see great football games against great opponents week in and week out. Who do you suggest we should have plugged in here so you didn't feel cheated out of your season tickets? Keep in mind that we'd probably have to agree to a home and home with anyone in a BCS conference, so you can kiss one of those tickets goodbye in the future.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
The opponent isn't the disparaging thing, rather, the combination of the opponent and price per ticket. Understandably so, the ticket prices have risen dramatically. An even more staggered price per game needs to be put in play IMO. $69 for UMASS is disgusting.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
Would you be happier if the UMass game were $5 cheaper and the MSU game $5 more expensive?
September 26th, 2011 at 10:15 PM ^
Something like that. I'd actually advocate a much larger spread between "premiums" and "non-premiums". I have 4 season tickets but live in SoCal. I make it out to 2, maybe three games a year. It's almost a certainty that I'm letting two of my seats go next year becasue the price is getting very steep and the home sched is garbage. Perhaps if games like WMU and EMU were $49 I can live with a $99 ND NEB, and Ohio price.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:09 PM ^
Roughly 109,000 people are going to be in the big house on 9/15 next year. To the best of my knowledge every one of those tickets was sold for atleast face value. Until you get all of those people to agree with you, my best suggestion is to just move on.
September 27th, 2011 at 4:59 AM ^
Maryland?
UNC?
Cincinatti?
Arizona?
Baylor?
Ole Miss?
It doesn't have to be a marquee game, but someone to try and make it at least interesting to the fans would be nice.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:44 PM ^
Those are all BCS league teams and would probably not agree to a single game in Ann Arbor. Even UConn was able to insist on a home and home, and I think all the teams you listed except maybe Cincy and Baylor outdraw them.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:25 PM ^
Oh don't be silly... you know Brandon will have raised ticket prices by then! Come on now, more like $75 or $80.
In all seriousness, if you want to figure out Dave Brandon look no further than his work at Domino's. He knew how to market a product, how to create revenue streams, how to basically make his pizza profitable. What he didn't know about or care about was the quality of the product. Notice how just after he left was when they put together their "new" pizza. I honestly believe that Dave Brandon is a brilliant marketing and branding guy, he knows his product and his audience.
However, he could not care less about the fan experience as far as parking, marquee games, etc. He wants butts in the seats, and he knows that people will fill up the stadium whether it's Georgia, USC, or Baby Seal U. He will expand the student section to fill that up and create the illusion of more demand (a la Canham) and then put in more seats around the jumbotrons to fill the "demand". It's Brandon's job to make money, not to make fans happy- if fans still spend their money on tickets and Michigan gear, then he is doing his job.
He is doing what an Athletic Director is hired to do, unfortunately. According to his job description, that is. I don't really like it but then again I'm a fan, and yes, I still go to the games.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:41 PM ^
Dave Brandon actually was still the CEO when Dominoes switched their pizza recipe. IIRC, he was on the 1st commercial about it.
This isn't the commercial I was referencing but here's a look at DB's talents as a thespian.September 26th, 2011 at 10:44 PM ^
Planning for that new pizza thing would had to have started long before Brandon left. Corporations don't just flip a switch and launch something major like that overnight.
September 27th, 2011 at 10:38 AM ^
BOOM! Roasted.
He also brought us those new oven-baked sandwiches.
BOOM! What letter?
September 26th, 2011 at 10:52 PM ^
69 is exactly what we need...
I'm not proud of that.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:30 PM ^
of course you mean "you" and "someone else," right?
September 27th, 2011 at 1:09 AM ^
Assuming ErictheActor is Eric Bana, I said exactly what I meant.
September 27th, 2011 at 1:58 AM ^
Until there is a playoff of conference champions, a team is stupid to schedule more than one competitive game. Really, a Big Ten team should schedule four tomato cans because the conference schedule is enough to get an undefeated Big Ten team into the NC game.
The fact that Michigan has two very competitive games already in 2012 should make even the most selfish and arrogant fan happy.
September 27th, 2011 at 12:19 PM ^
the UMass game will be on 9/15, not 9/29. So we will have a bye between ND and the Big Ten season.
http://www.umassathletics.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092711aab.html
September 26th, 2011 at 9:57 PM ^
I'm okay with UMass, but I would've also been okay with even a more Baby Seal U. Next year's schedule is going to be brutal.
September 26th, 2011 at 10:26 PM ^
A non-conf of vs. Alabama, at ND, and Air Force is hard enough. We should have found another Delaware State and played them. There is no need for this game to be competitive at all.
September 26th, 2011 at 9:59 PM ^
At least they'll be Div 1 this time (Or Bowl Subdivision or whatever you call it now).
September 26th, 2011 at 10:03 PM ^
Why is this just coming out officially now? At the Western game this year, they were handing out those wallet-sized schedule cards, and it had next year's schedule on it also. That had UMass already scheduled...