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Date Title Body
One Scheduling

I have a really hard time with the way they rank strength of schedule. Alabama or Miami plus three creme puffs is a much scarier schedule than UConn and another middling or bottom-feeder BCS school. Not that I don't dearly wish that teams would schedule harder out of conference - One headliner BCS school, one average BCS school, and two MAC teams sounds like a fair schedule to me, with no Div-II teams allowed.

On an only slightly snarky note - maybe they're waiting for a game when the crowd isn't demoralized to measure the stadium noise? I was at the OSU game, and it was depressingly quiet.

Average versus top

One thing I would really like to see in these articles that talk about any sort of strength of schedule calculation would be to drop the bottom half of the schedule and see how things change.

For an elite team, which is more likely to result in a loss - a whole season against solid but middling competition, or the one or two games against national title contenders? Generally the test of a season for Michigan has not been can they beat Purdue consistently but they can beat Ohio State and Penn State.

I'm willing to believe that the middle and bottom of West Virginia's schedule in the Big East was comparable or even superior... but who they did they play with defenses in the same league as Michigan, OSU, Penn State, Wisconsin, or Iowa - all teams that consistently field top 10 or top 20 defenses.

Scheduling Indiana instead of Delaware State shouldn't really change the outcome of the game for a competitive Division 1 team, but it will definitely help your average opponent ranking.

In 2007, the Big East in general seemed to have pretty solid defense. This year you have to get past your fourth big ten team to hit their first. I haven't taken the time to do a more detailed analysis, but I would find one interesting.

I blame RichRod for: Not

I blame RichRod for:

Not bringing in at least a few 2-3* MAC-level defensive back and quarterback prospects his first year (you don't expect much that late in the recruiting season, but when you have as glaring as everyone has stated you need to do something about it, and don't tell me you couldn't get a few middling recruits to jump ship for a late Michigan offer).

Not making defensive back a major priority in his second recruiting class, again given the coming apocalypse there, where he should have been able to pull in some 4* recruits who could start as freshmen (at least over a walkon), as well as some quality depth.

These were obvious holes in previous recruiting classes, as MGoBlog has pointed out time and again. But if he had put any effort at all into closing these gaps, the defense would have at least been mediocre, and we never would have been subjected to the Nick Sheridan show. Those players would be entering this year as sophomores and juniors and most of the excuses for why this team will continue to be horrible for another year would disappear. The complaint against RR is not that he is failing to compete with Ohio State and Penn State yet, but that he has been failing to compete with Indiana and Toledo. That is a level of failure that even the initial roster depletion does not excuse.

I would agree with you if you

I would agree with you if you had been starting Forcier last year.

Freshman quarterbacks, fit for the system or not, do not have a stellar history. Even Pryor (who had one of the best records of freshmen quarterbacks in history last year) was playing with one of the best defenses in the country, and with one of the best running backs, and experienced receivers. And he still looked really bad much of the time.

I expect Forcier to be an improvement over 3-9, but with the defense definitely still in "rebuilding" mode, I'd be very surprised to see him do anywhere close to that well. 6 wins is a distinct possibility, but I'd be much more optimistic about the "+8 in two years" possibility than the +5 in one year one. Even with some good improvements, you're looking at likely losses versus Penn State and Ohio State, and very possible losses against Michigan State, Notre Dame, Illinois, Iowa, and possibly Wisconsin depending on just how much of an idiot Bielema is.

Still, good luck. I'm excited to see what RichRod comes up with when Forcier (or Robinson, or whoever) has a year of experience under his belt.

Just from rough back of the envelope calculations

Just to get an idea of scale for possible rewards/damages.

EA Sports NCAA Football sells about 1 million new copies of their game a year across all platforms.[1]

Each game costs $60 new.

There are about 119 Division 1-A schools.

Each of these schools can have 85 players on scholarship.

So assuming that all players' likenesses have equal value (this is patently false, but all of their likenesses are being used without permission, and since none of them can sign commercial contracts, I don't see how exactly they could compute the relative value of Sam Bradford versus Nick Sheridan), if EA game up all of their revenue from the games you'd be looking at a little under $6,000 apiece per year, minus lawyers fees.

This scenario is unlikely, but it tells us what kind of numbers we're looking at. There are a lot of players, but the games do gross over $50 million dollars a year.

Personally I think it's complete bullshit that the NCAA lets them use everything about the players but their names without paying the players anything. They make how much money for the schools? But they get paid less than minimum wage.

[1]http://www.pastapadre.com/3109/ncaa-football-09-sales-numbers