U-Mass added to 2012 nonconference schedule

Submitted by G-Man on

Michigan will play UMass again in 2012.  Story here.  

I would assume it will be on either 9/15 or 9/29, but that part wasn't reported.

 

snowcrash

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. 

uniqenam

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.

jmblue

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.

jmblue

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. 

sum1valiant

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.  

justingoblue

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.

sum1valiant

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!

jcgold

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.

sum1valiant

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. 

EricTheActor

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.

EricTheActor

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.

sum1valiant

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. 

expatriate

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.

Tater

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.

UMWest22

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...