UM 2014 Conf schedule football
Michigan Football @umichfootball 3m
2014 Big Ten Schedule: MINN (9/27), @ RUT (10/4), PSU (10/11), @ MSU (10/25), IND (11/1), @ NW (11/8), MD (11/22), @ OSU (11/29)
notice trip to East Lansing....2 years in a row '13 and '14
I get your point. Still, make the 1 hour drive to the game.
AND neither did the B1G...then again, maybe they were only thinking of the MSU students.
Maybe they should stop this scheduling shit show if they want students to stay interested in college football. Just a thought.
How does Brandon keep letting this happen? Does he get payoffs for setting up butcher seasons every other year? WTF?
Geez people.
Sure. Because we get them for free. So the quality of the product doesn't matter.
Well, I mean... unless you live in Cuba or something, there are ways to get from place to place nowadays.
It is a "product," it's what we're paying for. And you CAN pay to go them all, you just have to pay for transit. I come from Pennsylvania to do just that. Is it worth it? For you, apparently not. Maybe that's because it's so expensive.
Parenthetically, nobody cares about what you would do in an alternate universe where you could go to all the games. It is not relevant to the issue.
Parenthetically, some of us may equally be worried about the fact that the team has to wade through a killers row of a shcedule every other year rather than simply having a balanced schedule every year, which would probably be better for the team, aside from being more enjoyable to the fans.
I live out of state too, but I usually try to make it back for the MSU, OSU or ND game. In 2014, my best choice is PSU. No offense to them, but PSU just doesn't do it for me like our big 3 rivals.
This hurts all fans, not just season ticket holders.
General admission aint gonna help people showing up for that home schedule. What is the best game on that schedule? Minnesota? Utah?
Maryland.
Pathetic joke of a conference. From the bottom up.
Brandon should reach out to IU and pay them to switch the locations of their MSU/UM games around so that UM/MSU can do the same. I think it would work better for both teams. Right now MSu gets ND, OSU and Michigan on the road all in the same year. Their fans probably won't care though because just messing with MIchigan by getting 2 home games in a row is like Christmas to them.
How is it acceptable, to Michigan or Michigan State, to be saddled with this schedule? We are both apparently stuck with each other and with OSU as away games or home games, depending on the schedule. Why wouldn't it be a no-brainer to switch up with MSU? Do Spartan fans want a home season without UM and OSU?
This has something to do with PSU being in the mix, but for the life of me I don't understand it, and I despise it. Let's just go back to a ten-team conference.
I'd be happy to go back to the 12-team conference.
I'd much rather have them alternate, but what can you do?
Northwestern is a crossover game, so that won't hold true going forward. Plus, there's the opportunity to change things again in 2016 when we go to a 9 game conference schedule.
should hand ND a letter before kickoff of the 2013 UTL game stating that Michigan is opting out of the final game at ND in 2014... Then go schedule a home and home vs a team that will make the 2014 home schedule look more attractive for ticket holders!
All the big boy schools are already booked up.
The best they could do in short notice is an FCS team.
USC, UTL 9-6-14! Make it happen Dave!
I was just going to post that. As things stand, ND's getting an extra home game anyway. I bet with enough money in front of someone, they'd be happy to cancel a game to get a home and home with Michigan. And, even if they had to settle for a MAC or a Mountain West team, it still improves the home schedule.
Strength of schedule for the playoff? Our team should be quite good in '14.
Why didn't our AD make a big stink about forcing us to play at sparty 2 years in a row, it woulda been easy to switch one of the other home games, pisses me off that the home schedule is so uneven going forward between seasons.
Losing Nebraska and Iowa for Maryland and Rutgers. Ugh!
The best football team Michigan will play at home in 2014 will probably be Utah or Appalachian State.
Gotta have MSU & OSU home games on alternating years, in my opinion. Those are almost guaranteed to be the biggest conference games we play every year, with these new divisions. Hopefully we can start playing big name OOC opponents at home in years we play away to those two, and vice versa.
Picks up Maryland and Rutgers from our division. Good lord.
Wow, I hadn't noticed that. What a freaking joke of a schedule.
Do we know msu won't be playing at MIchigan in back to back years? May have to wait to see a few future schedules to see how this plays out.
Playing at the dump in east lansing two years in a row fucking sucks. I would like to think that we're so much better than msu that home field advantage won't matter, but we just aren't there yet.
And Brandon was complaining about attendance at home games? Think anyone is going to care about showing up early for IU, Maryland or Minnesota?
Minnesota draws Michigan and Ohio State on top of divisional games @ Nebraska and @ Wisconsin.
We should trade Minny for you guys (Nebraska) in 2014. At night. Now we are talking.
I'm glad we're not just giving them all that BTN money for free.
Also another hit to the home schedule: back to back road games at northwestern.
NW is a legit team now and last year showed it.
The only logical thing I can think of for the games at state is there will be two straight home games against them in 2015 and 2016. And then it will reset in 2017 with the regular odd away and even home format. B1G series have quietly done that.
Minnesota in 2002-2005. But this is a rival team that isn't exactly one that we kick around.
Once again, fuck you B1G.
Will be hard to pull that off now with divisions and making sure every team has 4 home and 4 away games.
God, this was really stupid. With no more ND, we have two rivalry games. And they don't freaking alternate? What the hell Brandon?
USC, UTL 9-6-14... Make it happen Dave!
Ta hell with Notre Dame!
Honoring nothing and building meaningless footprints.
Michigan should always play MSU and OSU home games on alternating years. This makes no sense and is a big F you to M fans.
I am so happy that we lose Iowa, Wisconsin, etc. on a regular basis to play MD and Rutgers every year and to not see MSU or OSU at home every other year.
At this point, let's just join the fucking ACC with ND.
I can't wait to see this amazingly awesome homeslate of games in my Senior year. You can bet student ticket prices will go up again too.
I'm trying to come up with a witty comment but I'll just leave this here:
Is this like "Leaders & Legends"? If we complain enough, will they re-do it and makes jokes about how they knew it was crappy?
The Big Ten's press release is here, and it contains some information on the formula going forward. It certainly doesn't excuse the 2014 home slate, but it helps to explain it, at least in part.
(LINK)
It seems like 2014 and 2015 are essentially being considered transitional years between the addition of Maryland and Rutgers and the run-up to the 2016 start of the nine-game conference schedule. The essential formula is that a given team will play the other six teams in their division plus two from the other for 2014 and 2015, and then that will expand to three teams from the opposite division in 2016. I believe that confirms what we suspected anyway.
Here's where you can find everyone's schedule - (LINK). As for our 2014 home slate, Indiana on the day after Halloween somehow makes me think of Charlie Brown saying, "I got a rock."
Maybe Brandon was thinking of 2015. Mature offensive and defensive lines, senior linebackers Ross and Bolden leading the defense, a rebuilt, mature secondary (with Dymonte and Peppers (!) hopefully), Shane Morris in his second year (assuming a redshirt), Green at RB, Harris at WR, PLUS a stacked home schedule EQUALS a good shot at going 12-0 or 11-1 and being in the playoffs? Nah, probably just happened.
I think you have to keep in mind that scheduling is done years out and that the most David Brandon really controls is the non-conference slate.
As we witnessed with Notre Dame, these relationships can be cancelled or changed. It happens all the time in college football.
The games with Utah, Oregon State and Colorado were clearly put in there in response to what was going to be a Big Ten/Pac 12 scheduling alliance. While that didn't happen, those games are still in place and we'll still see them played.
Now I'm sure Brandon had a voice in keeping Ohio State in the Eastern Division and making sure that game was at the end of the season. But IRT Michigan State, I imagine the conference opted to have them in the East because they didn't want UM's conference schedule restricted by the necessity of a permanent cross-divisional game.
I'm really not going to sweat the back to back games in East Lansing because those types of arrangements happen all the time in the scheduling world. Besides, it appears that UM's cycle of Eastern Division teams for the foreseeable future is as follows:
2014/6/8/20
Home: Penn State, Indiana, Maryland
Road: at Ohio State, at Michigan State, at Rutgers
2015/7/9/21
Home: Ohio State, Michigan State, Rutgers
Road: at Penn State, at Indiana, at Maryland
By 2016, Michigan will play either Nebraska or Wisconsin on what is likely to be a two year on, two year off arrangement. The other five teams from the west (Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois, Iowa, Purdue) will be put in a rotation so that they each have at least one game with Michigan over a two-year period.
If you couple that Nebraska/Wisconsin game with the major home and homes coming up (Arkansas, Virginia Tech), then the 2018 through 2021 seasons will be something like this:
2018 (5 Home B1G Games)
Home: Penn State, Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas
Away: at Ohio State, at Michigan State, at Rutgers, at Nebraska/Wisconsin
2019 (4 Home B1G Games)
Home: Ohio State, Michigan State, Rutgers, Nebraska/Wisconsin
Away: at Penn State, at Indiana, at Maryland, at Arkansas
Replace Arkansas with Virginia Tech for 2020/1 and you get the idea. I think what Brandon wanted to do here (in cooperation with the Big Ten) is to have a balanced schedule home/away for the higher end teams on the schedule. I suspect he didn't want another situation like he does now where he had Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State all on the road or all at home.
If I were a UM fan, I'd just write off 2014/5 as transitional years in the scheduling and look forward to 2016 (when Nebraska or Wisconsin get on the schedule) and 2018 (when the major non-conference home and home games start kicking in).
What David Brandon has to do is get a quality non-conference opponent in place for the 2022 seasons and beyond. Programs like Texas, LSU, Miami-FL, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Tennessee could be candidates for future games because they don't have an instate non-conference rival (such as Florida-Florida State or Clemson-South Carolina) and they might be persuaded to leave familiar ground and come up north.
He also has to make sure the buy-in game opponents are varied and interesting. I have to give him credit for getting Brigham Young, Oregon State and Colorado in here with no return date required. Add UNLV and Hawaii to that list and you can see he's trying to expand those no return date games to programs outside the usual MAC teams like Miami OH, Bowling Green, the directional Michigan schools, Toledo, etc.